Shalom my sisters and brothers,
For those of us preparing to celebrate biblical Shavuot on Sunday, I just wanted to say a little about food – Jewish festivals inevitably have some food connection, because they are a celebration of the bounty that Adonai provides for us.
Your Shavuot meal on Sunday will be a kind of ‘Thanksgiving meal’. My advice therefore is to have something hearty and wholesome, something that you enjoy, and which gives you a warm feeling inside – any kind of ‘comfort food’ that makes you feel contented. It doesn’t have to be expensive, or take long to prepare.
Biblical Shavuot is connected to the wheat harvest, so in ancient times, various dishes were eaten that had bread-products in them. Middle Eastern Jewish communities still concentrate on enjoying bread and other baked grain products at Shavuot – which is what the ancient Israelites also celebrated with. You can see a range of them in my machzor for Shavuot.
In modern Israel, there are many tasty and enjoyable foods, such as shawarma. This is a pitta bread or a large flatbread wrap, filled with a mixture of chopped roast meat and chopped fresh vegetables, topped with various sauces, such as sesame seed sauce. If you are vegetarian, obviously you can substitute the meat with chopped falafel or chopped veggie-burgers. Israeli shawarma with all the trimmings and sauces is very delicious indeed! I really miss it!
In the UK, there is also a wide variety of pastry dishes available to us – we have savoury pies and pastries with either meat or vegetable fillings, so that is what I will be having (mine will be gluten free). If you can think of anything savoury in your own culture that has pastry, or any kind of bread-product in it, go ahead and have that as part of your main afternoon meal. You can even have something in a wrap, like burritos or fajitas.
For dessert you could have sweet pastries, or a variety of fruits, such as dates, figs, apples, grapes, pomegranates, watermelons, cherries, apricots, peaches and plums.
Basically, for your Shavuot thanksgiving meal, cook something you enjoy eating. Give thanks to God with something hearty and filling in your stomach!
peace and blessings in the Name of YHVH our Provider
your brother
Shmuliq