Like many North Americans, I was first introduced to the concept of Shavuot at the dessert table. I was 15 or 16 at the time, a late arrival to many of the traditions surrounding synagogue life. Before me lay a selection of cheesecakes, accompanied by a bowl of strawberry sauce and plates of mixed fruit. It was an impressive array for a small, 1970s synagogue whose Shabbat delicacies usually consisted of cookies. I stared at the buffet table, amazed.
“It’s Shavuot,” I heard a small voice say from behind me. A girl about 5 years my junior slid up next to me, grabbed a plate of cheesecake and shoved it into my hand.
“It’s Israel’s No. 1 favorite dessert,” she explained breathlessly. “So we eat it on Shavuot. We’re celebrating the Torah.”
“And the fruit slices?” I pointed to the abundance of fruit on the table.
“Oh, that’s for people who can’t eat dairy,” she answered indifferently before bouncing off to her next destination.
The history of Shavuot, as I learned later, is a more complex story, particularly when it comes to why grapes, figs and dates usually occupy our Shavuot tables. But my little friend was right: Dairy holds an esteemed role when it comes to celebrating Shavuot, a holiday that has no homemade symbol to tie to its original story. Chanukah features oil-rich latkes and sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts) to symbolize the story of the heroism of the Maccabees; Purim has hamantaschen to remind us of Haman’s betrayal; Passover has matzah to evoke memories of the Israelites’ hurried escape from Egypt. All tell stories of miraculous transformations. But cheesecake and ice-cream?
I’ve been pondering this recently while tending my garden. It’s a small but rich plot of soil that at various times has produced just enough vegetables and fruits to enrich our pantry during the winter. From time to time, rows of potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, carrots, lettuce, plums and strawberries serve as reminders that farming has always been a very Jewish occupation.
For the Israelites who settled in the Promised Land, the olives they pressed into oil, the dates that sweetened their foods and the wheat they harvested for their challah were not only symbolic of their affinity with the land but were a centerpiece of their relationship to God. No festivity was more emblematic of that spiritual connection than their celebration of Hag Ha-Bikkurim (“Festival of the First Fruits”) during Shavuot.
Each spring, the farmers of the region would set out for the Temple in Jerusalem carrying the bikkurim (the first, choicest fruits of the season) from their harvest of seven unique species (wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates). Ultimately, these items would be presented as a sacrifice to God in gratitude for the farmers’ good bounty.
According to the Torah, the multiday procession to the Temple was usually made on foot—except, of course, for the bikkurim, which were carried gingerly in a basket swathed in dried vegetation to cushion their long ride. “An ox with its horns glazed with gold leads the procession. A crown of olive [branches] are placed on its head, to publicize that the first fruits come from the seven species [for which Eretz Israel is praised],” describes a passage.
As the procession wound through the towns and countryside, it would swell with townspeople, farmers and excited onlookers until it reached the outskirts of Jerusalem. Emissaries would then be dispatched to announce to the city that the procession has arrived, and that the farmers have “adorned their first fruits and beautified them.”
For the Israelites, the Temple sacrifice was an integral part of the harvest festival. So when the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E. and the Jews were expelled from their lands, the celebration of Hag Ha-Bikkurim came to a halt.
“This exile [of the 10 tribes] meant the cessation of the agricultural practices that were central to Shavuot,” writes Rabbi Jonathan Lieberman, writer and co-founder of Techelet-Inspiring Judaism. “Without Jewish farmers or a Temple to bring offerings to, Shavuot had seemingly lost its anchor.”
This may explain why cheesecake and other dairy foods receive prominence at Shavuot: they symbolize another part of the agricultural festival, one that oddly, the Torah doesn’t associate with the Hag Ha-Bikkurim: the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people.
Still, I wonder if we lost something intrinsic and valuable to our relationship with Judaism when this holiday disappeared. Hag Ha-Bikkurim was more than a millennia-old agricultural tradition, and it was more than a community celebration. It was, like so many unique events we acknowledge as Jews, an affirmation of our worth and our endurance as a people.
Perhaps that’s why the bikkurim festival saw a resurgence as Jewish migration to Palestine picked up in the 1920s. Jewish settlers within the kibbutz and moshav movements saw the festival as a way to express their connection with the land and to find new ways to celebrate the age-old holiday of Shavuot. In 1924, the first secular version of the festival was held in the Jezreel Valley. Variations of the festival now take place each year throughout Israel.
For those of us in the Diaspora, finding that same sense of connection with our historical roots seems harder. But Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, who serves as the senior rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Upper East Manhattan, has come up with an inspirational answer. He calls it the “bikkurim moment,” a time “when we recognize how history touches [our] daily lives.”
For the farmer tasked with nurturing the first fruits from the soil, that moment may be the realization that his sacrifice won’t just fulfill a mitzvah for his family, it will unite a community.
For the young American woman experiencing Shavuot in Israel for the first time, it may be the memory of that first perfect piece of cheesecake that sent her on the journey so long ago to find the origins of Shavuot.