Shavuot, known as the “Feast of Weeks,” is one of three pilgrimage festivals in the Jewish calendar. Though not explicitly named in the Bible as such, it is celebrated as the day on which, our tradition states, God gave the Torah to the Israelites at Mount Sinai following the Exodus from Egypt, which itself is marked every year by the Passover holiday. In its association with the giving of Torah, Shavuot is a holiday of contemplation and study.

Shavuot is unique in that the Bible does not specify a date on which it is marked. Instead, it begins 49 days after Passover, marking the end of the yearly counting of the Omer—the seven-week period between the ancient ritual offering of unthreshed stalks of grain during Passover, and the beginning of the wheat harvest, with which Shavuot coincides.

During the time of the Temple, Shavuot was the first day on which individuals could bring the first fruits of their harvest to the Temple in Jerusalem. In the rabbinic era, the holiday also came to be associated with milk, cheese, and other dairy products like cheesecake, bourekas, blintzes, kreplach, atayef, and siete cielos.