What is Shavuot? Message from a rabbi

The first night of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot begins on Thursday, and a Canadian rabbi says the holiday carries a universal message of humility and bridging opposing views.

“It is the anniversary of the promulgation of the Torah [around 3,500] years ago,” Rabbi Moshe Goldman, rabbi of the Rohr Chabad Center for Jewish Life in Waterloo, Ont., said in a phone interview with CTVNews.ca. “This is a Judaism launch party.”

Shavuot, which means “week” in Hebrew, is celebrated by learning the Torah. Goldman explains the holiday marks the 50-day countdown from Passover.

“It is said that on the night before God gave the Jews the Torah at Mount Sinai, they went to sleep. And when God came to give them the Torah, they were still sleeping. Jews sleep in.

Goldman equates this to “sleeping on your wedding day”.

“Since then, the custom has been to correct that by staying up all night to study the Torah.”

On Thursday evening, the first night of a two-night holiday, the synagogues will host a series of programs, classes and individual sessions.

“When I was growing up, I just sat in the shul, studying the Torah until morning, or until I fell asleep,” says Goldman.

He added that a major part of the celebration was the recitation of the Ten Commandments from the Torah, an event where “the whole family tries to be there.”

Another custom entails eating foods made from milk.

“One of the simplest reasons is that the Jews have just received the Torah and they have all the kosher rules they didn’t have before, and the preparation of kosher meat is a slaughtering process, salt and clean the meat,” Goldman said.

Milk is a much easier alternative to maintaining a kosher diet, he explains.

“In some ways, the first way to actually comply with the kosher law is to eat a dairy meal. Since then, Shavuot has been the time to go crazy for milk.”

But beyond reading the Torah, eating cheesecake and muffins, Goldman says the holiday has a larger message that applies to all Canadians, regardless of religion.

“Society is very polarized. There are so many poles, so many divisions. A lot of the misunderstood groups were angry and frustrated because no one understood them,” he said. “The whole idea of ​​the Torah, what the Torah is here to achieve, and the task of Judaism beyond tactical religious observance is to demonstrate that the two opposites of any thing – the right and left of politics, any opposing views of equal validity – can be bridged.”

Goldman spoke of Torah and Shavuot as an attempt to break the shackles of the ego and devote herself to “academic humility.”

“The whole purpose is to guide us to understand that two opposites are not contradictions. They complement each other and are all necessary,” he said.

“Your challenge as a human being in this world is to live a life where, in your own way, you try to combine opposites and dedicate yourself to something greater. yourself.”