cellio: (moon-shadow)
Monica ([personal profile] cellio) wrote2010-05-20 10:37 pm
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tikkun leil Shavuot

There is a tradition on Shavuot, the holiday about the giving of torah at Sinai, to stay up all night studying torah. (This is called tikkun leil Shavuot.) This was, in fact, the holiday that got me to actually venture into a synagogue lo these many years ago, specifically for this: that sounded cool. I haven't actually stayed up all night in recent years, but I try to get in as much study as I can.

For the second time we had a community-wide tikkun from 10PM to 1AM. There were three sessions with a total of a couple dozen classes, with rabbis from across the spectrum. As I did last year, I set out to study with rabbis I'd never studied with (or met, as it turned out) before. It was a good experience; details of the classes will have to wait until after Shabbat.

In the last timeslot I attended a class taught by the rosh yeshiva (dean) of the Kollel, a local Orthodox institution that offers classes to adults. I've never been able to get a good read on Kollel -- in particular, I haven't been able to tell if women are welcome to study text there. (They have women-only classes on topics I'm not generally interested in, men-only classes on topics I am interested in, and under-specified opportunities for individual study.) So partly because of that, partly because of a recommendation, and partly because the topic sounded interesting, I went to the rosh yeshiva's class at the tikkun.

It was a good lecture (at that hour something a little more participatory might have been better), and at the end he said that people were welcome to go to Kollel after the community tikkun and continue studying. So I did that. They had several classes going (I saw mostly men); the rosh yeshiva was going to be studying the book of Ruth, so I opted for that. Apparently each year he's been spending all night (well, starting after the community tikkun last year and this) on one chapter of the book; this year was chapter 4. It kind of reminds me of our Shabbat morning torah study (20 years to complete the torah). :-) There were seven or eight students there (two other women). I held my own on prior knowledge (at least as expressed at the table). I only stayed until about 3:00 (too tired; hadn't been able to leave work early and get a nap). Next year I will try to go there again and stay longer. I may also try to find out what else the rosh yeshiva teaches throughout the year.

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[identity profile] evil-baron.livejournal.com 2010-05-21 10:35 am (UTC)(link)
Which of the two times does this commemorate?

What are the "Ten Words"?
cellio: (moon-shadow)

[personal profile] cellio 2010-05-21 10:21 pm (UTC)(link)
The actual revelation, not the later trip up for replacement tablets. (God spoke briefly to all of Israel, the people said "hey Moshe, handles this for us", and Moshe went up for 40 days. This first day was 50 days after Pesach, hence the holiday timing.)

What are the "Ten Words"?

"Ten words" or "ten utterances", aseret hadibrot, refers that direct revelation from God. It's not ten commandments; not everything in there is a commandment (e.g. "I am God"), and if you start counting commandment-like things you get more than ten. I'm not sure why the rabbis understood it as ten things.

Oh, and it's obviously a lot more than ten actual words. In Hebrew the word "daber" means both "word" and "thing"; I think of it more as the latter in this case.
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