Shavuot
June 9, 2008 (Jewish Year 5768)

Shavuot is always the 50th day following the beginning of Passover.
Celebrating the harvest and commemorating the giving of the Ten Commandments to the Jewish People on Mount Sinai.
Counting of the Omer is the Torah commandment to count forty-nine days beginning from the day on which the Omer, a sacrifice containing an omer-measure of barley, was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, up until the day before an offering of wheat was brought to the Temple on Shavuot.
The Counting of the Omer begins on the second day of Passover and ends the day before the holiday of Shavuot, the 'fiftieth day.'
Beginning from Shavuot through Succoth one may bring his offerings of the first fruits "Bikurim" and read the "Mikra Bikurim", the reading of Deut 26/5-10 explaining the gift of Bikurim : "My father was a wandering Aramean... The Lord freed us from Egypt... He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey, wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O Lord, have given me".
Deut. 8:8 describes the Land of Israel as "a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig-trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey."
The bikkurim brought to the Temple in Jerusalem on Shavuot were brought only from these seven species.
The word sheva, seven, has the same characters as the word savea, meaning satiated.
Of the seven species, four have the greatest importance in the land of Israel: wheat, barley, grapes and olives. These four are mentioned throughout the Bible by the names grain (wheat and barley), wine (from grapes), and oil (from olives).
There are a few reasons of reading the Book of Ruth during the morning service prior to the Torah reading on the first day of Shavuot in Israel, and on the second day in the Diaspora. The Book of Ruth is the story of a Moabite woman, who lived about 1322 BCE, and took upon herself the laws of the Torah. Shavuot commemorates the receiving of the Torah by Israel.
The story of Ruth takes place during the period of the Counting of the Omer and culminates at the time of the wheat harvest, which is the time of Shavuot.
Ruth 1:22, "So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabites, her daughter-in-law, with her, which returned out of the country of Moab: and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest."
According to tradition, King David, the great-grandson of Ruth, was born and died on Shavuot.




LINK: Hordeum vulgare, Barley (beer)