Jewish community of Bellaire celebrates Shavuot

The Ten Commandments were read aloud for the 3,324th time on Sunday, May 17 at The Shul of Bellaire.

In keeping with a longstanding religious tradition, members of the Bellaire Jewish community listened as the commandments were read from the Torah.

“Just as the Sinai event was attended by every Jewish man, woman and child, so too every Jewish person should make every effort to hear the Ten Commandments read aloud from a Torah scroll,”  Rabbi Yossi Zaklikofsky said in a press release.

Leading up to the reading on Sunday, the community stayed up all night studying the Torah as part of the celebration of Shavuot, a holiday commemorating the Jewish people's reception of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The celebration lasted two days, from sundown on Saturday, May 26 through sundown on Monday, May 28.

"The custom to learn all night is based on a tradition that teaches that on the night before God gave the Torah to the Jewish people, they actually went to bed instead of waiting with anticipation to receive the book,” Zaklikofsky said in the release. “[So], on the first night of the holiday, which commemorates the giving of the Torah, we try to stay awake studying Torah until the morning.”

For more about Shavuot, visit www.jewishbellaire.com/shavuot.