Happy Shavuot

It’s the Eve of Shavuot here, and we’ve done plenty of celebrating so far. Sharing some holiday pictures here today.

Here’s our Ron, all dressed up and ready to go to kindergarten. Holding his “Tene” - basket with first produce of the year. For some reason or other, we were told to put a sweet dairy pudding in the Tene this year - I think the Dairy Farmers lobby was working extra hours. In addition to that, we put lemons from our tree, and some not-yet-ripe passion fruit.

At Dan’s kindergarten, families were invited to the celebration as well. It’s a Vedic Kindergarten (associated with the Hari Krishna movement), so some Indian-style touches to the celebration there. Ron didn’t want to come, but my niece filled in for him.

Traditional Shavuot Tene’s on the table -

My niece Sheeran and other girls busy doing holiday crafts. They prepared baskets from pieces of thick colorful paper.

Other kids, like Dan and his Daddy here, were busy grinding wheat into flour:

Which was next turned into dough and pita bread (aka Chapati in Dan’s kindergarten - that Indian influence) -

And a brave Dad volunteered to manage the “Taboon” - the traditional clay oven over which the pita bread was baked -

Overall, a nice little festival, with kids dressed mostly in white, some talk about the meaning of the holiday (going for universal meanings of giving thanks to the One), a nice show for the kids and even a young calf wearing decorations -

We ended with a nice Indian-style lunch, served over recycled paper plates and containing some great vegetarian dishes. Of course, it being Shavu’ot, there was no escaping the traditional cheesecake - way too good and I’m afraid I had more than one slice!