Ever since I started writing these articles about my personal Yom Tov minhagim, I’ve been surprised by how many people tell me they have the same exact minhagim, despite that no sefer that I’ve seen mentions any of them.
I have not yet seen all the seforim.
But I think that the fact that so much of Klal Yisrael was mechaven to all of the same minhagim, completely independent of each other, says something about this deep connection that all Yidden have, k’ish echad b’leiv echad.
Yes, there are the minhagim that are mentioned in the seforim, such as buying flowers or having milchig seudos, but to be honest, my wife wants flowers every yom tov. And I can’t just tell her, “Show me the halacha!”
“No, seriously! Show me the halacha and I’ll buy you flowers! I’m not an unreasonable man!”
-I have a minhag to buy my wife two bouquets of flowers -- one for naaseh, and one for nishmah. And also because I can’t remember what kind of flowers she likes.
-I have a minhag that one of the bouquets I buy has to have at least one of those flowers that when you buy it, it’s closed, but over the course of yom tov, it opens, because that causes your wife to get excited a second time without you having to do anything. You can be sleeping.
-My wife has a minhag to cut the bottoms of the stems off before she puts it in the vase. I don’t know where this came from, but I think that’s how they did it in Europe.
-If it were up to me to preserve the flowers, my minhag would be to wrap it in wet newspaper and put it in the fridge. Maybe bring it out on the table for the seudos.
-We have a minhag that our kindergarteners come home on Erev Shavuos with an upside-down bowl painted green with flower stickers on it.
-The Minhag Yisrael is that kids also come home with fake flowers made primarily from pipe cleaners stabbed through Styrofoam balls, which you will put on your mantel, and unlike all the other crafts that the kids bring home that they play with and crush and eventually you can throw them out, such as the upside-down bowl, this one will be on display forever. You will spend years dusting around it, afraid of hurting the kid’s feelings, and then some day you’re going to mention it, and the kid is going to go, “That’s mine?” and then you’ll HAVE to keep dusting around it forever, now that they know.
-I have a minhag to wonder at what point pipe cleaners started being purchased more by kindergarten morahs than they were by old men who wanted to declog their old-timey smoking equipment. (Why do they come in all different colors?)
-My wife and I have a minhag to decide that we want to have company for some of the seudos, but not for one of the night seudos because they’re late, and not for one of the day seudos because of naps.
-We have a minhag, altz pirsumei nisa, to tell everyone which seudos we did milchig.
-A lot of people who, the entire year, are always scared of becoming fleishigs suddenly have a minhag to hem and haw about making any meals milchig at all.
-I have a minhag to intend to go to sleep Erev Shavuos, but to not actually go to sleep, because it takes way longer to make two genders of food than it does to make one. And because if you decide to speed things up and cook both at the same time, you will make at least one spoon treif, as a zecher to the B’nei Yisrael before Mattan Torah.
-I have a minhag to wonder how people decided that the reason we eat milchigs is that after Mattan Torah all the B’nei Yisrael’s pots were treif so they ate milchigs, because as far as I know, the mann didn’t need to be cooked. And it was pareve.
-We have a minhag that at least one person has to make a joke the first night of Shavuos about how we forgot to count the Omer. Which would be hilarious if this person hadn’t already forgotten six weeks earlier.
-Our shul has a minhag, on the first night of Shavuos, to not daven Maariv until after nacht, because they can’t just say, “Hey, don’t anyone make Kiddush until after nacht!” This is the one halacha they don’t trust us with.
-I have a minhag to make or buy like 8 milchig desserts for the maybe 2 milchig seudos we’re going to have. I think one milchig seudah should be just desserts.
-One of those desserts has to be cheesecake, regardless.
-Some people have a minhag to make pareve cheesecake – so important is the minhag to make cheesecake specifically. These people have a minhag to say, “It’s just as good.” I have a minhag not to mish with these people. There’s no way they’re not going to try to serve me potato blintzes.
-A lot of K’lal Yisrael has a minhag to stay up all night to show that if we had to do it again, we’d stay up the whole night before we get the Torah, and then take a huge nap right after we get the Torah.
-My kids have a minhag to stay up primarily so they can tell their friends that they stayed up.
-Their minhag is that falling asleep during Shacharis doesn’t count as falling asleep.
-I have a minhag to fall behind on whatever I’m learning in the weeks before Shavuos so I have something extra to learn Shavuos night.
-I have a minhag to show up to shul on Shavuos night with a cloth bag containing way more seforim than I’m going to use, so I can decide what I’m learning as I go.
-I have a minhag to bring a sefer to learn from specifically during the downtimes of Shacharis, so I don’t fall asleep during a Mi Shebeirach or something. Or during the sale of aliyos, which is literally a hostage situation.
-The shuls in town have a minhag to have shiurim all night with titles designed to draw people in, such as “Making the Omer Count!” and “Where is Har Sinai today?” I went to the Har Sinai shiur – I walked across town for that one – and the answer they came up with was, “We don’t know, and it’s not important.”
-My shul has a minhag that someone gives a halacha shiur about medical issues.
-Some people have a minhag that if they fall asleep in a room with a shiur going on, it’s like they were learning. It’s called subliminal learning. They also do it as a zecher for when Hashem was giving us the Torah, and every time Hashem started saying one of the dibros, everyone collapsed.
-My minhag is to try to learn with all of my kids at once before they fall asleep, like those old mini video games from the ‘80s where you’re juggling babies.
-The Minhag Yisrael is that if a food is out all night on Shavuos, it’s not halachically considered as if it was out all night. But to be extra careful, there are people in the shul who dedicate themselves to spending all night standing over the food so there won’t be a shaylah. That said, if you do sleep through the night and you go to the later Shacharis and there’s a kiddush and the cake is a little crispy on the outside, don’t ask any questions.
-I have a minhag to eat milchigs for the first seudah so I can stay up all night drinking coffee, and then actually spend most of the night drinking soda, because it’s summer and coffee’s hot. Until the point of the night that I’m cold because I’m tired, at which point I have coffee. All this so I can make an Asher Yatzar before Shacharis. And a couple of times during.
-I have a minhag to check on the refreshments table before I start learning, despite literally having just eaten an entire seudah at 11 o’clock at night.
-I have a minhag to study what time Shacharis is starting every time I get up for food.
-Despite learning all night, I have a minhag for it to always occur to me right before Shacharis that I forgot to learn the halachos of which brachos I have to listen to others say for me. The machzor has a minhag to not a say one word about this.
-My non-Jewish neighbor has a minhag to do yard work outside my window on Shavuos morning.
-Despite some people not being so into milchigs, there is a minhag to drink coffee because “Coffee aleihem har k’gigis,” there’s a minhag to eat quiche because “Quiche echad b’leiv echad,” there’s a minhag to eat lasagna because the shoresh of lasagna might be Sinai, and there’s a minhag to eat salmon because it’s mentioned in the second-to-last passuk of Megillas Rus. (Most of these are not my jokes. I think one of them is, but I forget which one.)
-I have a minhag to gain as much weight over the 2 days of Shavuos as I do over the 8 days of Pesach and the 9 days of Sukkos. Combined?
-My wife has a minhag to plant our aravos in the back yard after Sukkos and our marror top in the backyard after Pesach, and both of those save us money in subsequent years, but she will not plant our flowers after Shavuos. Those are on me. Maybe I should just make her fake flowers, so we can have them forever. Are there any ex-smokers out there who have pipe cleaners they’re not using?
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
