Have a Pizza for Shavuot!

 As we approach Shavuot, I wanted to share some words about the holiday which I have previously circulated.

First, I wanted to take a look at a custom many observe during this holiday: eating dairy.

            While dairy foods are customarily associated with Shavuot, there’s no real understanding as to why this is the case. Several ideas have been floated to suggest a connection.  In Psalms 68:16, Mount Sinai is called “Har Gavnunim,” a Hebrew word similar to the Hebrew word for cheese (“gevinah”). Gematria suggests that the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew word for milk (“chalav”) is 40, which is the number of days Moses spent on Mount Sinai. A more far-fetched idea is that until the Torah was given, Jews had no idea which animals were kosher, so they lived on dairy or pareve foods only.

            Perhaps there is a single textual connection which gives substance to this custom. In Ex. 34:26, we read, “Bring first fruits to the house of God; you shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk.” The holiday of Shavuot is when first fruits were offered, and the same verse refers to milk.

            The Ashkenazi custom of eating blintzes, it has been suggested, comes from the idea that two blintzes on a plate look like the scrolls of Torah!      

            Second, for those who are not lactose intolerant, may I suggest that eating a cheese pizza works out very well. The triangular shape of a slice reminds us of the three kinds of Jews: Priests, Levites, and Israelites. A typical pizza is sliced in 8ths and represents the seven weeks of the Omer and the first week afterwards, starting with Shavuot. The crust is brown (like the wilderness), the sauce reminds us of the “Red” Sea of the Exodus, and the white (the cheese) is in tradition a symbol of physical and intellectual purity, being the true color of light, without any modification.  

Finally, there is something additional to say about pizza. In The Alienated Minority - The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe by Kenneth R. Stow, he discusses early Jewish Italian commentaries on major Jewish texts written in “Judeo-Italian” (which used Hebrew script to transliterate Italian words). One such commentator, Judah Romano, explained what Maimonides meant when he used an obscure word “hararah” (a kind of flat cake which could be kept warm for eating on Shabbat without violating the laws of Shabbat). Romano used a one-word Italian term to explain what this “flat cake” was, using the Hebrew letters peh-yod-zayin-heh: “pizza” Stow writes, “This is the first known written attestation to this now international term.” So, while Jews may not have invented pizza, we were apparently the first to write about it! Chag Sameach!