Beyond Cheesecake: Foods of Shavuot

See Eliezer Brodt, “Tracing the History of Eating Milchigs on Shavuos,” Seforimblog (2014).  

This passage does not appear in the extant versions of Maʿaseh Rokeach but was preserved in the halakhic work of R. Mordechai b. Hillel. See discussion in Simcha Emmanuel’s critical edition of דרשה לפסח לרבי אלעזר מוורמייזא [Oratio ad pascham] (Jerusalem: Mekitzei Nirdamim, 2006) 39.

This line also appears in the Maʿaseh Rokeach, but instead of עצרת (=Shavuot in rabbinic parlance), it says:

^{מעשה רוקח תקכב} נראה לי אדם שרוצה לאפות מצות או מלייאתות בשאר מועדות, מותר לגרוף התנור לנקותו מן הגחלים.

^{Maʿaseh Rokeah §522} It appears to me that a person who wishes to bake matzot on the night of Pesach or muliyyatot on other festivals, may scrape the coals out and also the ashes… 

(I quote here from Emese Kozma’s critical edition available here. In the standard printing, this is §48.) The version in the Maʿaseh Rokeach implies that this dairy food was just a holiday treat in general and not tied to Shavuot. See discussion in fns 200 and 201 in the Kozma edition.

Eventually the term Floden was generally used for pies made with milk foods or fruit, differentiated from pashteda, which was used for foods made with meat.  See e.g., Sefer Amarkol, “Laws of Issur Veheter”; Sefer Issur Veheter (attributed to. R. Yerucham) §60.

Moshe Dinin, קונטרס מטעמי משה [Kuntras Matamei Moshe] (Modi’in Illit, 2009).

Mordechai Yehudah Leib Zaks, זמנים: חידושים וביאורים וגילוי מקורות למנהגי הזמנים והלכותיהם [Holidays: Novellae, Explanations, and Sources for Holiday Customs and their Practices] (Jerusalem 1951) 53. I am grateful to R Eliezer Brodt for sending me his work on dairy foods on Shavuot (n.1 above) and calling my attention to this source.

Editor’s note: For more on this phrase, see Zev Farber, “In What Way Is Shavuot Zman Matan Torateinu?” TheTorah (2015). For how this concept developed, see Norman Solomon, “Shavuot: How the Festival of Harvest Grew,” TheTorah (2014); Michael Segal, “Shavuot: The Festival of Covenants,” TheTorah (2014).

 Editor’s note: For how this was understood in the Second Temple and Rabbinic periods, see Marvin Sweeney, “The Three Shavuot Festivals of Qumran: Wheat, Wine, and Oil,” TheTorah (2018); Yoseif Bloch, “Bikkurim: How the Rabbis Made a Mitzvah for Male Landowners More Inclusive,” TheTorah (2017).

Academic scholarship refers to this speech as “the small historical credo.” See Nathan MacDonald, Not Bread Alone: the Uses of Food in the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 76–78, and bibliography ad loc. Editor's note: For more on how this credo has been understood in traditional and modern reception, see Dalia Marx, “A Torah-Prescribed Liturgy: The Declaration of the First Fruits,” TheTorah (2016).

 This part of the speech makes up the core of the maggid text in the Passover Haggadah. Editor’s note: For some discussion, see Naomi Graetz, “Arami Oved Avi: The Demonization of Laban,” TheTorah (2018).

It is found on page 116a of the Lyck edition (1866), edited by L. Silbermann. R Anatoli lived in Provence and Italy. This same point is found in Mahzor Vitri:

^{מחזור ויטרי רפז} להיות עמלים בתורה שנמשלה לדבש וחלב. שנ' (שיר השירים ד:יא): דבש וחלב תחת לשונך.

^{Mahzor Vitri 287} …to be working hard in the study of Torah, which is compared to milk and honey, as it says (Song 4:11): “honey and milk are under your tongue.”

Ivan Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 127.

 Qalonymos uses the term haritzei halav for cheese here, which refers to the bribe David’s father sent to his sons’ army commander: ISamuel 17.18

This is presumably a play on lechem mishneh the two loaves of Sabbath and festival.

Qalonymos writes maʿaseh reshet which is a reference to the lattice-work of the altar. A pastry fried in oil called zalabiyya is found in both Jewish and non-Jewish Arab sources, and mostly eaten nowadays on Chanukah, although Yemenite Jews eat it on Shavuot. Mediaeval Arab cookery books and modern internet sites include a version of zalabiyya made of lattice-work: Could this be what Qalonymos is referring to?

Qalonymos writes lahmaniot, a term used today for rolls. But Rashi on b. Berakhot 42a translates lahmaniot as אובלייש, wafers called oublies in Old French.

In modern Hebrew duvdevanim is used for cherries, but Rashi on b. Avodah Zarah 39b explains duvdevaniot as bunches of grapes dripping juice. Since the grape harvest in Provence and Northern France would not begin until some months after Shavuot, and grape-juice could not be kept as is from year to year, it would have needed to be reduced to must (Lat. defrutum, caroenum, sapa) to preserve it. Must appears as moût in the contemporary non-Jewish Viandier as an ingredient in sauces.

The much-debated term pat haba’ah bekisnin could mean bread which comes with nibbles, bread which was nibbled, or bread in the form of pockets. R. Joseph Caro in the Shulchan Arukh OH 168, 7 provides a recipe for the latter: pastry stuffed with honey or sugar, walnuts, almonds and spice.

riqu'ei fahim is a biblical phrase referring to the copper covering of the altar, made of beaten copper incense pans. I do not know what it is doing here at all, unless to tell us that (some of?) these foods were baked on or in copper pans, or just possibly that the dough was beaten out like beaten copper to form a thin sheet.

Qalonymos writes ma‘aseh avot which is a reference to the High Priest‘s breastplate, suspended on braids. This may be the earliest reference to braided hallah.

 The phrase appears in a story in b. Taanit 24b.

This is taken from the Haberman edition (Tel Aviv 1956), pp. 33–35.

Sulam: ס=60 + ל=30 + מ=40 = 130. Sinai:  ס=60 + י=10 + נ=50 + י=10 = 130.

Devash (honey): ד=4 + ב=2 + ש=300 (=306); Halav (milk): ח=8 + ל=30 + ב=2 (=40); Qimha desemida (Aramaic for fine flour): ק=100 + מ=40 + ח=8 + א=1 (=149) ד=4 + ס=60 + מ=40 + י=10 + ד=4 + א=1 (=119). 306+40+149+119=614.

Editor’s note: See discussion of this text in Carl Ehrlich, “Ezekiel’s Vision of God and the Chariot,” TheTorah (2019).

See too Midrash Songs Rabbah 4.11

The Latin reads:

Multos quoque cibos Lactarios ut scriblitas vel liba et alia id genus e lacte confecta edunt; quia Lex quam, eo die acceperunt; candida pura et dulcis instar lactis fuit. Probationem hujus rei Cabalistae afferent … Inter alia altam et crassam scriblitam eamque septempliciam facunt, quam scriblitam montis Sinai appellant in memoriam septem caelorum , quibus Deus monte Sinai est delatus.

Cato (c. 2^nd B.C.E.) de Agricultura 78; Petronius (c. 1st CE) Satyricon 35,66. For a reconstruction, see A Dalby & S Grainger,  The Classical Cookbook (London, 1996) 92-96; Andrew Dalby, Food in the Ancient World from A to Z  (London: Routledge, 2003), s.v.  “scriblita” writes: “a big cake or at least one of the same weight as the placenta/plakous if Petronius is to be trusted, and you might pour Spanish honey over it while serving. Greek plakous is often translated ‘cheesecake.’ Cheese, honey and flour were the chief ingredients.”

 Samuel Krauss ‘Aus der jüdischen Volksküche’ Mitteilungen zur Jüdischen Volkskunde 18 1-2 (1915) 1-40. Isserles (Ramah) Comm on Shulchan Arukh: Yoreh Deah 97.5

Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz Aufrichtig Teutsch Redender Hebräer, Welcher Gründlich zeiget den Ursprung und die Schicksaale des Juedischen Volks wie auch Deroselben Kirchenwesen Gottesdienst, Glaubens, Artikuln Lehriätze übrigen Gebrauche und besondere Lebensarth (Leipzig, 1756). I am grateful to Petra Kopf for this reference. Gil Marks in his Encyclopedia of Jewish Food (Hoboken, 2010) s.v. “fluden” writes of cheese fluden garnished with white flowers but does not give a source.

Yom Tov Lewinsky, Sefer HaMoadim vol.3: Shavuot (Tel Aviv, 1950).

This source is quoted in Hebrew. It is possible that it is an (unacknowledged) translation of the Latin of Buxtorf, cited below.

This is a literal translation of Mount Sinai cake

It is unclear to me what the meaning of “folds” (qefulah) is. Does this refer to dough that was folded in a sort of concertina, layer above layer, or does it refer to dough that was wrapped seven times around the centre in a spiral?

Born in Salzberg, Dukas did her doctoral work in Germany, emigrating to Palestine in 1933.

Lewinsky, Sefer HaMoadim 3, 269. Berches are known from the fifteenth century to the present-day, especially in the lands bordering the Rhine, as the local name for hallah. See on this Petra Kopf and Susan Weingarten “Berches: a Jewish ritual bread in its geographical and cultural contexts,” in Food and Ritual: Proceedings of the Oxford Stymposium on Food and Cookery 2023, ed., Mark McWilliams (Totnes, 2024), forthcoming.

These included the four communities of Carpentras, L’Isle-sur-Sorgue, Cavaillon and Avignon. Like Qalonymos, these communities were also sited on the border between Ashkenaz and Sepharad.

 Cecil Roth, “Jüdische Bräuche im Comtat Venaissin,” Mitteilungen zur Jüdischen Volkskunde 30 (1927)18.

 Many Mizrahi Jews do not possess a set of dairy dishes even today.

 This confluence between Jacob’s ladder and Moses’ ascent, is however to be found in Midrash Genesis Rabbah, where Jacob’s ladder is said to represent Mount Sinai, with its head in the heavens and feet on the earth: Genesis Rabbah 68; VaYetzei 12. I am grateful to Gilla Rosen for this reference. The Mekhilta (Lauterbach, BaHodesh 309-310) depicts God as bending down the lower and upper heavens onto the top of the mountain.  

Here the seven layers seem to be distinct from the ladder.

Samuel Krauss “Aus der jüdischen Volksküche” also cites the chief rabbi of Salonica to the effect that at least some Sephardi Jews also kept the tradition of making a cake in the shape of a ladder, calling it “the speaking sign of the meaning of the day, namely the Ascension of Moses to receive the Torah.”

Illustrated recipes can be found in a number of modern Sephardi cookery books eg: Nikkos Stavroulakis Cookbook of the Jews of Greece (Athens, 2005) 86-87; Robert Sternberg, The Sephardic Kitchen: The Healthy Food and Rich Culture of the Mediterranean Jews (New York 1996) 269–277.

See the recipe for Monte Sinai con uova filate in Claudia Roden, The Book of Jewish Food (London: Penguin, 1997) 496-467.

Giulio Morosini Via della fede (Roma 1683) p. 621, cited by Ariel Toaff Mangiare alla Giudia: cucina ebraiche dal Rinascimento all’età moderna (Bologna, 2011 2^nd edition), 135. Variations still appear in modern Italian Jewish cookery books. In one modern Italian Jewish cookery book, it is described as a Purim food from Livorno: Joan Rundo, La cucina ebraica in Italia: oltre 200 ricette dalla traditione (Casale Monferrato, 2003).

To ascertain when it is of a proper consistency, drop a spoonful in cold water, form it into a ball, and try if it sounds when struck against a glass.

 The Jewish Manual or Practical Information in Jewish and Modern Cookery with a Collection of Valuable Recipes and Hints Relating to the Toilette, by ‘a Lady’ (London, 1861) attributed to Judith Montefiore.