Celebrating the Jewish holiday of Shavuot is pretty much the equivalent of a collegiate all-nighter. The religious festival commemorates the delivery of the Torah to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. One associated tradition includes eating dairy foods—the Jews were just sorting out the complicated kosher meat laws—so bring on the cheesecake! A second tradition is also, naturally, food related. Originally a grain harvest festival, it was customary to offer, or now to eat, the seven species mentioned in the Torah and native to Israel. Included are honey, barley, and grapevines. The whole food pyramid thing hadn’t really been sorted out yet either. Yet a third tradition provides for staying up all night studying Torah.

While the all-nighter tradition is often an affair carried out only by more Orthodox practitioners, a few DC congregations will be burning the midnight oil in. Cleveland Park’s Conservative Adas Israel Congregation will keep their doors open until 5 a.m. tomorrow. They’ve combined forces with Tikkun Leil Shabbat, a progressive, pluralistic community geared toward Jews in their 20’s and 30’s, to produce an evening of “activism, text study, movement, and song!” Discussions of the ten commandments, global debt and the economic crisis, and wage theft are interspersed with readings of the Book of Ruth, yoga, and mitzvah charades. The AJWS/Avodah Alumni Partnership serves as a cosponsor and participants are asked to bring their own coffee cups from home to help them stay awake while keeping green.

Tikkun Leil Shavuot will just be getting started while Sixth & I’s evening will just be winding down downtown. The TEN: An Alternative Shavuot Experience with Jonathan Safran Foer is headlined by said author of Everything is Illuminated. A band called Girls in Trouble will sing songs of “bible stories: ancient girls in trouble. You may find yourself dancing and purring along to the triumphant melodies, but then, days later, you’ll realize you’re singing about leprosy,” or so says their MySpace page. Sandwiched in between is the “Saw You at Sinai” dating gameshow (which happens to be hosted by yours truly), a cooking demo, and yes, more Jewish yoga. Tickets are $6 unless you signed up for free in advance. And you’re home before midnight.

Or you could just grab some frozen yogurt with figs, olive oil, and pomegranate seeds and call it a night.