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Shavuot, the dairy festival
The festival of the giving of the Torah, when cheesecake, cheese blintzes and bourekas are the custom in many homes.
Cheeses for Shavuot, the dairy festival
Shavuot marks the giving of the Torah at Sinai, and it is the custom in many Jewish communities to eat dairy foods on the festival. The reasons given are several: the Torah is compared to milk and honey in the Song of Songs, and one tradition holds that the Israelites could not yet cook meat according to the new laws. Ashkenazi kitchens make cheesecake, cheese blintzes and kreplach filled with farmer cheese; Sephardi and Israeli tables have bourekas with white cheese and salty Bulgarian-style feta. Israeli dairies sell more cheese in the week of Shavuot than in any other.
The cheeses
Also part of it, and being written: Farmer cheese (Fills blintzes and kreplach in Ashkenazi homes.).
Written by the EveryCheese desk with AI assistance. Background: "Shavuot" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Feta: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Cream cheese: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, source