A Night To Remember

One custom of Shavuot is to stay up
all night learning, called tikkun leyl
I Shavuot. Many local synagogues
hold special programs with guest
speakers throughout the night, and o
course there are snack breaks.
If you're interested, you don't
I. need an invitation: Just call
I ahead and ask for the topics,
I or stop in any time during the
night. The challenge is staying
,---
-' I awake. Here are a few ideas
to help:
#1) If caffeine does the trick
for you, look for a wonderful
I Turkish coffee from Israel, avail-
' able locally at A Taste of Israel,
25250 Greenfield (at 10 Mile
I Road). You can buy it plain or
,\= I with hell, cardamom, which is
popular with both Israeli Arabs and
Jews. You'll enjoy not only the taste
1 but the aroma of Turkish coffee,
which smells exactly like cafes you
might visit in Israel.
' Prepare the coffee by mixing with
iwater then bringing to a boil, or pOur
•r I the coffee directly into hot water. In
both cases, you'll end up with a
thick, gritty substance at the bottom
I called buhtz, mud. Don't consume
that, please, but do be sure to add a
I lot of sugar to your Turkish coffee.
And remember, it has a tremendous
amount of caffeine, so be pre-
; pared.
If you're not a coffee drinker,
you can find your caffeine in
I another drink that% being touted
as something of a wonder cure:
green tea. An eight-ounce cup
I of green tea has 100 milligrams
of caffeine (the same as an
eight-ounce cup of coffee).
Other fun caffeine facts: a Coke
has about 65 milligrams, and a
three-ounce chocolate bar has
18 grams. Most health officials rec-
ommend keeping your caffeine intake
to less than 200 grams a day.

.•

#2) Keep cool — literally. You're
more likely to doze if you're warm
and comfortable. If you find yourself
drifting off, remove your sweater or
step outside and enjoy the breeze.

#3) Believe it or not, one prominent
cause of constant drowsiness is too

much sleep, so don't enjoy a 15-hour
sleep the day before Shavuot. In fact,
you may want to try something that
Leonardo da Vinci, Florence Nightin-
gale and Winston Churchill all
believed left them better rested:
sleeping four hours at two sepa-
rate intervals, rather than taking
eight hours in a row.
#4) You can find natural
stimulation in certain herbs.
Black pepper, camphor, euca-
lyptus, peppermint and rose-
mary all are said to waken and
refresh the senses. For a deli-
cious pre-Shavuot dinner, dine
on chicken and potatoes with a
little olive oil and rosemary. Or
do as ladies did in the olden
days and dab a drop of essen-
tial oil of peppermint on a handker-
chief.

SO

is as

Eo ry ty

havuot

A
Good
Read

In your synagogue or temple dur-
ing Shavuot, you will hear cer-
tain scriptures read from the
Torah. As you may have
guessed, prominent among these
is Exodus 19:1-20:26, which
recounts God's giving the Ten
Commandments at Mount Sinai.
Especially intriguing is the read-
ing of The Book of Ruth. Rabbis -
and scholars have suggested
numerous reasons why Ruth is
read on Shavuot, but there is no
one, definitive answer.

IS C

d by ectira dairy foods.

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do Shavuot
to receive it, that once t - e
right, you've got to have cheese-
back to their tents fter the eve
they were tired, and so simply'
cake.
Scholars have put forth a number s agrabbed the easiest thing to pre-

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5/22
1998

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