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בס"ד Shavuot Customsא ח ר י תא=אקדמות ח=חלב ר=רות י=ירק ת=תורה The above is a mnemonic for our Shavuot customs. A Cha R I T, acharit, referring to minhagim, customs, that come after, later than the Torah itself. A = Akdamut; Cha = Chalav; R = Ruth; I = Ierek; T = Torah. Akdamut. A poem in Aramaic by R. Itzhak b. Meir, chazan in Worms, whose son was murdered in the 1096 Crusade. Each of the ninety lines of the poem ends in את , the last and first letter of the alphabet, indicative of the fact that the Torah begins anew when it seems to have reached the end. The poem extols the Almighty and His love for Israel and exhorts Israel to hold firm to faith in its redemption. The poem is read in Ashkenazi Synagogues at the beginning of the reading of the Torah. In Sephardi Synagogues, the custom is to read Azharot, a poem that speaks of the 613 commandments, as well as a special ketuba, a marriage contract between the Almighty and Israel. Chalav, milk. It is the custom to eat dairy foods for at least one meal of the festival. Some of the reasons given are:
Ruth. The Book of Ruth is read in Synagogue on Shavuot. Here, too, there are several reasons given for the tradition:
Ierek. Greenery. On Shavuot, it is customary to decorate the Synagogue and the home with plants. Indeed, the festival is referred to as mode gol, the festival of flowers, in a Persian tradition (D.Sperber, Minhagei Israel). This custom, too, has a number of explanations:
Torah. Tikkun leil Shavuot refers to the custom to stay up and learn Torah in the night of Shavuot. The reason most often given is based on a Midrash that the Israelites were sleeping and had to be roused to be ready to receive the Torah; the nights of learning on Shavuot are intended to make amends for this. However, there is a kabbalistic tradition maintaining that, on the contrary, the Israelites could not sleep on that night because they were so excited on this, the eve of their wedding . Israel was the bride, the Almighty was the bridegroom and the gift of the groom to the bride was the Torah (Eliahu Ki Tov, loc.cit) The Jewish People cherish all these customs. The fact that each has a number of explanations is an indication that that the oral tradition that has handed these customs down to us is indeed very old. Our Sages were offering possible justifications for each custom, not giving us its historical origin. Any one of the explanations for a particular custom would be good enough for us to make sure that it is continued by future generations. |
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