Field Study

Why the holiday of Shavuot is all but ignored across America

By Marissa Brostoff

When it comes to theological significance, the late-spring festival of Shavuot is no slouch: The event it commemorates—God giving the Torah to the Jews at Mount Sinai—is arguably the most pivotal in the narrative of the Jewish people. But from the treatment it receives next to its more popular siblings—at least within non-Orthodox American communities—you wouldn’t know it. Passover gets celebrated at the White House and inspires novels, Yom Kippur turned Sandy Koufax into an American Jewish hero, and Hanukkah is so visible that conservative talk radio hosts think it threatens Christmas. Shavuot, meanwhile, can’t even satisfy Tom Lehrer, who “spent Shavuos, in East St. Louis/A charming spot but clearly not the spot for me.”

“When you ask people what’s their favorite holiday, I’ve heard people say Passover, Hanukkah, Sukkot, Purim,” says Jonathan Sarna, who teaches American Jewish history at Brandeis University. “I think it’s harder for people to find an emotional attachment to Shavuot than to almost any other Jewish holiday.” According to Sarna and other historians, Shavuot’s trouble catching on is nothing new—it goes back, they say, to the fall of the Second Temple in the year 70 C.E.

 In its earliest incarnation, Shavuot marked a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the sacrifice of the harvest’s first fruits and is one of a historical trio of harvest celebrations, along with Sukkot and Passover, known as the shalosh regalim. According to Paul Steinberg, a rabbi at the Conservative synagogue Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles and the author of a series of books on the Jewish holidays, rabbis in the Talmudic period needed to reinvent Shavuot after the Jews left Israel for the Diaspora and no longer traveled to Jerusalem with harvest offerings. So, through what Steinberg calls the use of “complicated mathematical formulas” that were debated for centuries, the sages associated Shavuot with the giving of the Torah. But that interpretive shift, says Steinberg, has not “captured the imagination of Jews in America or anywhere else.” (According to Reform rabbi Andy Bachman, who leads Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim, some early Zionist settlers went so far as to explicitly reject the rabbinic interpretation of the holiday in favor of the agricultural one and celebrated Shavuot by dancing in the fields and riding on tractors.)

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To talk about Lag B'Omer (the thirty third day after Passover) with out talking about Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai is ignoring the main point of the festivities of the day. Although all through-out Israel, the evening is marked by the lighting of large bonfires that are visible for miles, the real celebration in Israel of Lag B'Omer, is in the northern Galilee town of Meron. A small town by all measures, on Lag B'Omer, it becomes filled with celebration. An estimated 250,000 to 300.000 people congregate on this normally sleepy mountainside during the 24 hours of Lag B'Omer. What is the reason that in a country of five and a half million Jewish inhabitants, such a large percentage of people make their way, through traffic and police barricades to come to Meron?

The answer is Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (or Rashbi) as he is some times refereed to, died on this day 2287 years ago and was buried in Meron, together with his son Rabbi Eleazer. So what is the festivities? Why the carnival atmosphere? Why the enormous amounts of pilgrims, both religious and not?

To answer this question requires a brief explanation of one of the most unique personalities in Jewish history. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai was one of the disciples of Rabbi Akiva. Although Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai is mentioned many times in the Talmud, his fame is known because of the Zohar (The Book of Splendor). This is a book which is the basis for most mystical thought in Judaism.

Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai lived during the time of the Romans. When one of his colleagues praised the Romans for building up the Land of Israel, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai slandered them by stating that they did it for themselves and not for the Jews. When word reached the Roman governor, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai was forced to flee for his life. He and his son, Rabbi Eleazer, took refuge in a cave. In the cave, he and his son began studying the Torah, a miracle occurred for them, that a Carob tree sprouted and a water spring opened up providing them with sustenance. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai and his son lived in the cave for twelve years, studying by themselves with out interruption and with out going outside.


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What is Lag BaOmer?

Lag BaOmer, the 33rd day of the Omer count—this year, Sunday, April 28, 2013—is a festive day on the Jewish calendar. It is celebrated with outings (on which the children traditionally play with bows and arrows), bonfires, and other joyous events. Many visit the resting place (in Meron, northern Israel) of the great sage and mystic Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the anniversary of whose passing is on this day.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who lived in the second century of the common era, was the first to publicly teach the mystical dimension of the Torah known as the “Kabbalah,” and is the author of the basic work of Kabbalah, the Zohar. On the day of his passing, Rabbi Shimon instructed his disciples to mark the date as “the day of my joy.”

The chassidic masters explain that the final day of a righteous person’s earthly life marks the point at which “all his deeds, teachings and work” achieve their culminating perfection and the zenith of their impact upon our lives. So each Lag BaOmer, we celebrate Rabbi Shimon’s life and the revelation of the esoteric soul of Torah.

Lag BaOmer also commemorates another joyous event. The Talmud relates that in the weeks between the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot, a plague raged amongst the disciples of the great sage Rabbi Akiva, “because they did not act respectfully towards each other.” These weeks are therefore observed as a period of mourning, with various joyous activities proscribed by law and custom. On Lag BaOmer the deaths ceased. Thus, Lag BaOmer also carries the theme of the imperative to love and respect one’s fellow (ahavat yisrael).

Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha'atzmaut

Yom Hazikaron: Israel's Memorial Day - Begins at sundown on April 14th

The fourth of Iyar, the day preceding Israel's Independence Day, was declared by the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) to be a Memorial Day for those who lost their lives in the struggle that led to the establishment of the State of Israel and for all military personnel who were killed while in active duty in Israel's armed forces.

Joining these two days together conveys a simple message: Israelis owe the independence and the very existence of the Jewish state to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for it.

Yom Hazikaron, the Israeli Memorial Day, is different in its character and mood from the American Memorial Day. For 24 hours (from sunset to sunset) all places of public entertainment (theaters, cinemas, nightclubs, pubs, etc.) are closed. The most noticeable feature of the day is the sound of siren that is heard throughout the country twice, during which the entire nation observes a two-minutes "standstill" of all traffic and daily activities. The first siren marks the beginning of Memorial Day at 8:00 P.M., and the second is at 11:00 A.M., before the public recitation of prayers in the military cemeteries. All radio and television stations broadcast programs portraying the lives and heroic deeds of fallen soldiers. Most of the broadcasting time is devoted to Israeli songs that convey the mood of the day.

Yom Ha'atzmaut: Israel Independence Day - Begins at sundown on April 15th
Israel's Independence Day is celebrated on the fifth day of the month of Iyar, which is the Hebrew date of the formal establishment of the State of Israel, when members of the "provisional government" read and signed a Declaration of Independence in Tel Aviv.

Read more about these holidays and Yom Yerushalyim on the JVN Modern Holidays Spotlight

Yom HaShoah- Holocaust Remembrance Day

Yom HaShoah, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day, occurs on the 27th of Nissan. Shoah, which means catastrophe or utter destruction in Hebrew, refers to the atrocities that were committed against the Jewish people during World War II. This is a memorial day for those who died in the Shoah.
The Shoah (also known as the Holocaust, from a Greek word meaning "sacrifice by fire,") was initiated by the members of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, which seized power in Germany in 1933. The Nazis believed in a doctrine of racial superiority, centering around the idea that that people of Northern European descent were somehow better than members of all other races – especially the Jews, who were "unworthy of life."

After taking power, the Nazis gradually restricted the rights of German Jewish citizens and encouraged their followers to commit acts of violence and destruction against Jews and their property. During World War II (1939-1945), the Nazis implemented their "final solution," a plan to concentrate and annihilate all European Jews. Jews were first crammed together in ghettoes and slave-labor camps, where disease, brutality, and malnutrition ran rampant. Eventually, they were sent to death camps, where millions were murdered in special facilities designed to kill a tremendous number of people over a brief period of time. In addition to the six million Jews who died - two-thirds of the European Jewish population – the Nazis also killed millions of others, including Roma (Gypsies) and Slavs, political and religious dissidents, the handicapped, and gays and lesbians.

Today, many commemorate Yom HaShoah by lighting yellow candles in order to keep the memories of the victims alive. Most synagogues and Jewish communities gather together to commemorate the day through worship, music and the stories from survivors.