Prepping for Shavuos Around the World

The cows were milked more than a month ago, the special batch of kosher cheese has finished fermenting, the mouth-watering cheesecakes have been ordered from Israel, and the handouts for the Torah study are already copied and collated. Like thousands of Chabad emissaries around the world, Rabbi Chaim Hillel and Devora Leah Azimov of Northern Cyprus are preparing to celebrate Shavuot with their community of several hundred souls.

However, unlike their counterparts in Israel or more established Jewish population centers, the Azimovs must either import or make everything they serve—something they say they’ve gotten used to since they first arrived on the sun-drenched Mediterranean island in 2008.

The Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which is celebrated the evening of Tuesday, June 3, through the evening of Thursday, June 5, commemorates the day that G‑d descended on Mount Sinai and proclaimed the Ten Commandments to the nascent Nation of Israel, whom He had just rescued from Egyptian slavery 50 days earlier.

Hebrew, English, Russian, Spanish and, of course, Turkish will be heard as the Azimovs and their flock of natives and tourists begin the holiday celebration with prayer services, followed by a festive meal. Then the rabbi will be joined by a handful of congregants who plan to study Torah for the rest of the night, following an ancient tradition found in the Zohar and other mystical writings.

In Bozeman, Mont., Rabbi Chaim Bruk says his community will hold an all-night learning session for the very first time.

“We plan to light candles at 8:50 in the evening, pray, and have our holiday meal. By 11 o’clock, we’ll be sitting down to learn, and that is what we will do until daybreak,” says Bruk, co-director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Montana with his wife, Chavie. He notes that a number of community members have already committed to be with him when the sun rises on Shavuot morning.

Like hundreds of other communities, the Bozeman group will base their studies on a curriculum prepared by the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) called “All Night at Sinai.”

Longer Night Than Most

While the night is relatively short in the Northern Hemisphere, Rabbi Yonason Johnson, who leads Kollel Menachem Lubavitch in Melbourne, Australia, says he is planning an eight-hour program to last the long winter night.

“From 10 to midnight, we will have symposium-style discussions geared toward the wider community that we expect to attract several hundred people,” reports Johnson . “Then, from midnight to the morning, we will have more intense classes on Jewish law, ranging from one individual’s responsibility for another’s wrongdoing to the halachic standards for a mechitzah.”

Since the night is so long, Johnson notes that many attendees recite Tikkun Leil Shavuot—a condensation of the entire Torah, with selections from Tanakh, Mishnah, Zohar and Maimonides’ listing of the 613 mitzvahs—and still have time to join the classes that interest them.

According to the Zohar, the nightlong learning is but a preparation for the following morning, akin to a bride preparing for her wedding day.

Accordingly, even after a full night of learning, Bruk and his Montana community will be back at the synagogue by midmorning for a special holiday prayer service that includes the reading of the Ten Commandments from the Torah scroll—an event that the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, encouraged every Jew to attend, even small children.

In order to make the daytime services attractive to children, Chabad centers host special ice-cream parties, in line with the time-honored tradition of eating dairy food on Shavuot. While in the past, the Bozeman community delayed the Torah reading until the afternoon so that children would be able to attend after school, Bruk proudly notes that his community has progressed to the level of Jewish awareness and observance that many of them keep their kids home on the holiday and plan to bring them to services in the morning.

All About the Kids

Dix Hills, N.Y., Rabbi Dovid Weinbaum has recently joined Rabbi Yaacov and Zoey Saacks at the Chabad-affiliated Chai Center, where he serves as youth director.

Weinbaum says that between a children’s program during the holiday evening meal and lecture, one the next morning during services where kids will join the adults to hear the reading of the Ten Commandments and another special reading of the commandments in the afternoon for the 100-plus kids in Hebrew school, he will teach and entertain as many as 250 youngsters during the course of the two-day holiday.

While the kids are sure to pile on the ice-cream, more discriminating palates can satisfy their dairy desires with quiches, cheesecakes, traditional blintzes and lasagnas (click here for great Shavuot recipes)—requiring Azimov, the Cypriote rabbi, to supervise the milking of the cows right after Passover, so that a specially supervised run of kosher cheese and other delicacies will be ready for congregants after services on Wednesday morning.

Yet he notes that the food—however fresh and scrumptious it may be—is but a small component of the holiday.

“We gather to pray, to study and to celebrate,” says Azimov, “and it’s really special that the children will be there with us.”