Food for Torah thought on Shavuot

Food plays a significant role in Jewish practice. There is good reason for the fact that study of kashrut laws is an intrinsic part of the course undertaken by potential rabbis preparing for smichah examinations.

And we all know that food shops, cafes and restaurants are second only to shules in making obvious to all Jewish suburban locations in major cities.
It is often quipped that Judaism can be summed up in just nine words: “They tried to destroy us. We won. Let’s eat.” But even beyond those occasions when we commemorate such elements of our history, food provides a key to the atmosphere of an occasion.

The key to Pesach is matzah and the industry that has grown up around restrictions applicable to food on that festival. Of course on Pesach what we must or may not eat is the subject of strict Torah law.

On Succot, specific foods are not prescribed, but its key aspect prescribed by Torah law is where we must eat – in the succah rather than the house.

Torah laws aside, honey-based items are eaten on Rosh Hashanah; oil-based foods such as latkes and doughnuts on Chanukah; while even Purim has its three-cornered hamantashen and kreplach. And on Yom Kippur it is abstinence from food that gives the day its character though again tradition – albeit characterised by origin related differences – determines at least some of what is eaten prior to and following the fast
The festival of Shavuot is, in many ways, the calm, quiet relation of the Torah prescribed festivals.

From a Torah perspective it is simply the date, 50 days after Pesach on which the first wheat loaves of the new season were brought to the Beit Hamikdash.

Only through a set of calculations, not specifically tied to the festival in the Torah, do we know that it occurs when Israel experienced the Sinaitic revelation.

But as is so often the case in Judaism, custom stepped in where law left a vacuum. Hence while today its key identifying practice is Torah study – Tikkun Leil Shavuot – on the night of Shavuot, Shavuot also has its gastronomic aspect.

Regarding food, one of the best-known customs of Shavuot is the eating of dairy foods at the holiday meals or during the nighttime study sessions. Cheesecake and cheese blintzes have become beloved and fattening Shavuot staples in Jewish homes for centuries. Why?

The Torah itself is compared to milk – “Honey and milk under your tongue” – and thus dairy products are symbolic of that great day at Sinai.
Additionally, after receiving the Torah, the people may have faced the problem that meat in their possession was not prepared in accordance with the newly-given kashrut laws. Hence, perhaps, they were constrained to eat non-meat products.

A further source of the custom of eating dairy foods on Shavuot lay in the description of the Land of Israel as being “a land that flows with milk and honey”. Of course, that connection with the land was also emphasised on the festival by its harvest nature and the bringing to the temple of the first wheat.

Finally, regarding mountains we find in Psalm 68 the expression “gavnunim – a humped formation”, similar to the word “gevinah” for cheese.
I conclude with a dvar Torah I once heard from my rosh yeshivah, the late Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach but also found elsewhere (e.g. in Rav Moshe Shternbuch’s Moadim u’Zmanim).

In Shemot (34:26-27) we find one of the three injunctions not to seethe a kid in the milk of its mother – the origin of the law banning the mixing of meat and milk. The verse that follows that injunction as the beginning of a new paragraph includes the instruction to Moshe to write down “these words” of the Torah “for on the basis of these words I made a covenant with you and Israel”.

Which words was he commanded to record at this point? The usual explanation is the words of the Torah as such. However, Rav Shlomo Zalman suggested that it could also specifically refer to the preceding verse regarding separation of meat and milk.

But, you ask, how is that law the basis of the fact that the covenant of Torah was between Hashem and Israel?

The Midrash says that when Moshe Rabbenu ascended Sinai the angels objected to his receiving the Torah. They felt that Torah was only suited for heavenly beings.

In reply, Moses remonstrated with them saying that when they only had one mitzvah to keep they had failed the test. For according to Bereshit (18:8) when the angels came to Abraham to advise of the pending birth of Isaac, Abraham gave them a meal of butter, milk and meat of a young calf – which seems to imply that they partook of milk and meat at one meal.
While one can find ways to answer that accusation (such as the fact that butter and milk are mentioned first prior to the meat – a halachically acceptable way of consuming both types of food – the bottom line is that according to the Midrash their inability to deny this accusation led to their being declared unfit as guardians of the Torah, which was accordingly handed down from heaven to earth.

Hence we are encouraged to eat both meat and milk on Shavuot – in accordance with the laws of separation – to celebrate the fact that our maintenance of those laws shows us to be fit and proper recipients of Torah.
So enjoy your cheesecake, blintzes and all the other delicacies!

Shabbat shalom and chag sameach.

Yossi

Yossi Aron OAM is The AJN’s religious affairs editor.