Eating Dairy Foods

May 21st, 2007 | Category: Shavuot, Religion, Jewish Food

It is customary to eat dairy foods on the first day of Shavuot. There are a number of reasons for this custom:

On the holiday of Shavuot, a two-loaf bread offering was brought in the Temple. To commemorate this, we eat two meals on Shavuot — first a dairy meal, and then, after a short interruption, we eat the traditional meat holiday meal.

With the giving of the Torah the Jews now became obligated to observe the laws of Kosher. As the Torah was given on Shabbat no cattle could be slaughtered nor could utensils be koshered, and thus on that day they ate dairy.

Another reason is that the Torah is likened to nourishing milk. Also, the Hebrew

word for milk is “chalav.” When the numerical value of each of the letters in the word chalav are added together - 8; 30; 2 - the total is forty. Forty is the number of days Moses spent on Mount Sinai when receiving the Torah.