Rachel announced that this was her favorite holiday!\u00a0 It being so close to Memorial Day… I figured it was that holiday to which she referred…<\/p>\n
But no, she had another day in mind.\u00a0 “Come on”, she prodded me… “you know… that Jewish <\/em>Holiday<\/em>…”<\/em><\/p>\n Armed with that hint I was able to dredge up from memory the holiday of Shavuot (as a kid growing up it was called Shavuos… the variant spelling owing to the difference in Ashkenazic — <\/em>Germany & Eastern Europe —\u00a0pronounciation and the Sephardic — <\/em>Spain, the Levant & now Israel itself).\u00a0 Regardless of pronounciation and spelling… this Holiday is not “front page stuff”, like say Rosh Hashonah, Yom Kippur & Passover.\u00a0 <\/em>Dollars to donuts a sizeable majority of American Jews know little of nothing of this Holiday beyond it’s name.<\/p>\n You can mark\u00a0Rachel’s Day\u00a0on your calendar: May 24th… or more to the point: the Sixth Day of Sivan<\/em>.\u00a0 The day is calculated by measuring seven weeks<\/em> from the second day of Passover<\/em>… and the next day is Shavuot <\/em>(the Feast of Weeks).\u00a0 Passover <\/em>marks the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from Pharoah’s yoke and Shavuot <\/em>marks the Nation of Israel accepting the Torah and committing itself to serving God.\u00a0 <\/p>\n You wonder about the intervening 49 days.\u00a0 What was that about?\u00a0 I figure they should have signed on right after crossing the Red Sea.\u00a0 “Thank God we’re out of here!”\u00a0 Something held them back… maybe they were concerned about getting stuck with a whole bunch of rules that made living difficult… things like no bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches… and you can’t turn on lights during the sabbath, and you have to memorize a bunch of stuff for your Bar Mitzvah, and the services are far too long… and then real technical things that scholars study, argue and debate about (for thousands of years, I might add) without resolution.\u00a0 Yes, I can see that it would have given one pause for thought.<\/p>\n I think the instigator for the delay was Dathan, the Hebrew overseer for the Pharoah.\u00a0 Portrayed by Edward G. Robinson in the film Ten Commandments<\/em>, he was my favorite character… a poor weasel of a man who would sell his soul for a talent<\/em> of gold: “I am here, girl, because I would put no fear in a desert god and his mud-pit prophet. I am here because I bowed lower than my brothers before the Egyptians. Now the Egyptians bow low before me. Joshua wanted you. Baka wanted you. But you belong to me, a gift from Rameses.” <\/em><\/p>\n Dathan, even if he was ficticious,\u00a0could stir things up… I can see it… “Do you really want to give up lobster??\u00a0 Do you really want to fast on Yom Kippur<\/em>?”\u00a0 Yes… I think it would take me 49 days to think about it.\u00a0 Maybe we should have thought about it a little longer… like maybe 4000 years, or at least until Sandy Koufax could have pitched in the World Series.\u00a0 Well… what’s done is done, and we have Shavuot<\/em>\u00a0every 6th of Sivan.\u00a0 <\/p>\n I don’t ever recall “celebrating” Shavuot <\/em>when I was growing up… I think it was mentioned once or twice in Sunday School.\u00a0 The other Jewish Holdiays are more understandable to me.\u00a0 Feast of Weeks<\/em>?\u00a0 “Feast”?\u00a0 Well… we\u00a0commemorate the day with an all-night Torah study session.\u00a0 In Synagogue we read the Book of Ruth.\u00a0 We eat dairy foods (a good blintz every now and then is a good thing).\u00a0 We decorate homes and synagogues with greenery.\u00a0 I don’t know if all this constitutes a “Feast”.\u00a0 Personally… the “all-night Torah sudy session” would be a deal killer for me.\u00a0 I didn’t even do that for Erik Hansen’s 20th Century European History Final at Union.\u00a0 <\/p>\n I can live with blintzes.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Still, it’s mighty impressive that our Miss Rachel has adoped this day as the highlight of the year.\u00a0 Impressive, in part, because Rachel was raised as a Catholic.\u00a0 But it gets a little complicated here… Rachel’s Dad is Jewish… Rachel’s Mom is Catholic.\u00a0 So I am told… when Rachel was 5 a plate of Manicotti and a plate of Gefilte Fish were put before her and she was asked to choose.\u00a0 I can understand her choice.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Yet… here it was… the 6th of Sivan… and she felt the primordal tug.\u00a0 A tug that goes back 4000 years when Dathan asked, “Do you really want to give up cheeseburgers?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rachel announced that this was her favorite holiday!\u00a0 It being so close to Memorial Day… I figured it was that holiday to which she referred… But no, she had another day in mind.\u00a0 “Come on”, she prodded me… “you know… … Continue reading