Shavuot Resources

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Traditional Foods: More information

Why Dairy?

Shavuot is the day Jews celebrate Moses receiving the Torah. The Torah is sometimes said to be "Sweet as Honey" (That link will take you to a song we sometimes sing Sunday mornings). Israel, in Torah, is called "The Land of Milk and Honey." So that's where all these connections come from. There isn't really one answer (Such as, we eat matzah on Passover because there we no time to let the bread rise), but a collection of reasons that people cite.

Some people also say the Torah is like mother's milk, like what a newborn drinks to become strong. Torah, then, helps us grow strong. The Israelites were "newborns" to freedom (Since they had escaped Slavery from Egypt only a few weeks earlier). So at we have dairy to connect to the milk. Like I said, the connection is a little shaky, but that's the idea.

Dairy is sweet and helps us grow. Torah should be the same.

What kind of dairy?

Google these words and you'll find more information about these foods.

Blintzes
Burekas
Cheesecake

But also any food with dairy is good for shavuot. Milkshake. Ice cream. Cheese curds. Whipped cream (As long as it is real cream, and not "whipped topping"). A glass of milk or grilled cheese is also fine, but most Shavuot celebrations use sweet dairy foods.

You should also try to find one or two recipes of traditional Shavuot foods which you think you'd be capable of preparing/cooking.

Your comic

Last time we had decided your group's poster would be comic strips about the foods. This is a great idea. Stick to this idea.

How you'd want to do that is, I think, to divide the topic among each of you. Someone could do types of dairy. Some could do a comic about how Torah is like "milk and honey." Someone could do Moses and God talking about their favorite shavuot foods. Or Moses making an ice cream sundae and talking about how ice cream reminds him of Torah. You get the idea. Don't try to make one long comic - I think you'll be more successful if you break the topic up, and then your poster will have multiple comics for people to admire.

Best of luck!

Mt. Sinai: More information

A lot of people think the Torah is myth - that is, that the stories are made up. Because of this, they assume many of the places talked about are not real. But this is not true. Mt. Sinai is actually a real mountain. It is in Egypt.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Jabal+Mousa/@28.4340472,33.750984,948909m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x1454855532dfc1cf:0x8f6d107a766ebf7!8m2!3d28.5392576!4d33.9749193

Look at that map. Mount Sinai is in a part of Egypt known as the Sinai Peninsula (So-called because of Mount Sinai).

Currently on Mount Sinai there is a Christian monastery (a certain kind of religious house) called St. Catherine's Monastery, named after a Christian woman in Egypt. You can learn a lot more about it on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Catherine%27s_Monastery.

There's also small town there. It is called Saint Catherine. It has about 5000 residents (For comparison, Newton has 87,000).

Remember - Find something about your topic people are unlikely to know about, and then find a way to teach them. Truthfully, very few Jews know about modern day Mt. Sinai, because the religious house there is Christian, and the town is named after that same famous Christian.

Best of luck!