
PJ Library Grandparents: Celebrating Shavuot
The harvest holiday of Shavuot commemorates a few different things:
- Bikkurim: bringing the first fruits of the season’s harvest to the Temple in Jerusalem
- Shavuot: the festival of weeks (shavua means “week”), and the celebrations start seven weeks after the second night of Passover (Tuesday, June 11th this year).
- Z’man Matan Torateinu: “The Season of the Giving of the Torah,” which commemorates Moses receiving the Ten Commandments and the Torah at Mount Sinai.
We also have some ideas for additional ways you can celebrate Shavuot with your grandchild in person or at a distance.
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Tips for Connecting Around Shavuot
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Check out the Jewish Grandparents Network’s Simple Ideas to Bring Shavuot to Life and the downloadable 13-page Shavuot Discovery Kit.
Study Together
- Learn more about Shavuot in this video from BimBam.
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Pick a Jewish tradition, holiday, or part of the Torah and study it deeply in age-appropriate ways with your grandchild(ren). There are endless options, but here are a few ideas to get you thinking:
- Learn the Ten Commandments and why you think those were the ten rules passed down to the Israelites. If you wrote them today, what would they say?
- Learn about a Sephardic tradition (if your family is Ashkenazi) or vice-versa.
- Learn about our ancestors such as Ruth, Judith, Joseph, or David.
- Answer the question about why we stay up all night studying Torah (Tikkun Leil Shavuot) on Shavuot?
- The rabbis believed Torah learning should be sweet. Send candy or other items for your study/reading session together.
- Count the Omer, either as a counting game or by creating your own numbers. We count the Omer each day between the second night of Passover until the start of Shavuot. The Omer is the sheaf of barley brought to the Temple; it is planted in the spring and reaped seven weeks later.
Read Together
- On Shavuot, we re-read the Book of Ruth, which tells the story of Ruth, a young widow, who follows her mother-in-law, Naomi, to Bethlehem. You can read the story, or share a kid-friendly video version with your grandchildren. Ask, “What would you do next?” or “How would you react to that?” throughout the story to encourage conversation.
- Have an extended story time. Reading to children, even when they are old enough to read to themselves, has many positive benefits. Your grandchild(ren) can also practice reading to you. To share books, consider Epic Books or Kindle e-Books. You can also watch a video re-telling of No Rules for Michael by Sylvia Rouss, illustrated by Susan Simon.
- With older grandchildren, you can start a book club: you would each pick a book you think the other might enjoy to read individually and discuss together. We would love to know what books you and your grandchild recommend for each other! You can also get some ideas from the PJ Our Way book list (you can sort by genre to pick one you both like).
Cook Together
- It’s traditional to enjoy dairy foods on Shavuot (find out why), so cook something and enjoy it together in person or over video chat. Here are some tested recipes:
Volunteer Together
- In the Book of Ruth, the rule from Leviticus becomes real: farmers are instructed to leave what is growing at the edges of their field unpicked so that the poor may glean it and feed themselves. This is how Ruth meets Boaz. What are ways that your family can provide for those who are hungry while respecting their dignity?
Create Together
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Shavuot Resources
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