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Dairy foods are associated with the loving, nurturing generosity exemplified by a mother nursing her baby. It is this supreme love that we connect to on the anniversary of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. New beginnings and connecting to the Source is what Shavuot is all about.
Here are a number of other reasons for the custom to eat dairy on the first day of Shavuot:
1. Chalav—the Hebrew word for milk—has the numerical value (Gematriah) of 40 reminding us the number of days and nights that Moses remained on Mt. Sinai.
2. One of the eight different names for Mt. Sinai is "Gavnunim," which means white like cheese.
3. The words in the Torah referring to the Shavuot holiday offering are "Minchah chadashah l'Hashem b'shavuotaychem," which are also an acronym for the Hebrew word m'chalav—"from milk."
4. When the Jews received the Torah on Shavuot they were commanded only to eat meat which was ritually slaughtered. Since none of their meat was previously slaughtered and the Torah was given on Shabbat -- when it is forbidden to slaughter animals -- they were forced to eat dairy for the rest of the day.
5. Shavuot is the completion of a spiritual process that we begin on Passover, and their respective holiday offerings represent the stages of this process. At the Passover Seder we have two cooked dishes to commemorate the two offering brought on Passover in the Temple times. To connect the two holidays, we eat two cooked foods on Shavuot as well—one meat and one dairy.
6. Two loaves of bread were offered in the Holy Temple on the holiday of Shavuot. To commemorate this offering we eat two meals on Shavuot; one dairy and one meat (eating meat is mandatory on every festival).
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