Shavuot
Celebrate Shavuot with CBST and other Queer synagogues from around the country!
Services & Programs
For the first time, queer synagogues across the country are coming together for a shared night of Shavuot learning. Join us for an expansive, collective, musical Tikkun Leil Shavuot. Begin with CBST clergy and interns in person and online. Later, we will join partner communities on Zoom for inspiring sessions that uplift Torah through a proudly queer lens. Together, we’ll study, eat cheesecake, and celebrate revelation as a community.
Tikkun Leil Shavuot
Thursday, May 21
6:30 – 10:30pm | In-person at CBST 130 W. 30th Street and Zoom | Click to Register – (Walk-in Welcome!)
9:00pm –1:00am CBST Joins SHAVUOT: A QUEER KALEIDOSCOPE (In-Person and Zoom)
*CBST in person programming will close at 10:30pm, A Queer Kaleidoscope will continue on Zoom*
Shavuot Day II—Yom Tov Service with Yizkor
Friday, May 22
CBST 130 W. 30th St. | In-person and livestreaming
6:30pm Kabbalat Shabbat Shavuot Day II
Saturday, May 23
CBST 130 W. 30th St. | In-person and Zoom
10:00am Shabbat Shavuot Day II—Yom Tov Service with Yizkor
Further Reading and Resources for Shavuot
Shavuot Teaching from Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Intern Alana Krivo-Kaufman
In the story of Shavuot our texts describe Sinai as a place of great danger and unknown outcomes. Smoke and fire surround the mountain. A cloud descends. A horn blares. The mountain trembles. It’s chaotic, and scary; it’s loud and confusing.
This is the site of revelation. We receive Torah not in a quiet room, not in the moment in which we feel completely prepared, but in a space of unknown where there might be some danger.
The text tells us that we, the people, accompany each other amidst the unknown. Together, we leave the spots where we had pitched our tents. We journey side by side, וַיִּֽתְיַצְּב֖וּ בְּתַחְתִּ֥ית הָהָֽר / and we, the people, station ourselves together, at the bottom of the mountain.
The word b’tachtit can mean at the base or bottom of the mountain, but it can also mean underneath. Rabbi Adina Allen invites us to use this word to flip the script on revelation as coming down from the sky:
“What if we took tachtit to mean under in the sense that in the moment of revelation the people went underground, deep into the earth? What if… they went digging into the mud, encountering worms and mycelia and tangles of roots–the entire life-supporting network that exists underground. Rather than revelation being something that happens far away from us… we can imagine Torah as all of ours, available to all when we dig deep, perhaps get a bit messy, and connect with the vitality of existence.”
Our tradition teaches us that it was not just the Israelites in the Torah who were there, but that each and every Jewish soul who has and will ever live was there too. As we prepare to receive Torah, may we be strengthened by accompanying each other and by rooting into the messiness and possibility that can grow from the unknown.