shavuos leftovers

1) Interesting Masechet Sofrim that says Meg Rus is read in two parts, half on the first night of motzei Y"T and half on the second.  I have a hunch motzei here actually means the night on Y"T, not the night after.  In any case, I would also assume that the Mes Sofrim means that there is one chiyuv to read the book in its entirety over the span of the two days of Y"T, not that there is a chiyuv of kri'ah on 2 perakim the first night and a separate chiyuv on the second night.  The reading at night part makes sense -- we read megilas Esther by day only because we have a derasha that says that in addition to the chiyuv at night, there is a chiyuv "l'shanosa," to repeat it by day.  According to some Rishonim, the ikar chiyuv is in fact at night.  There is no such chiyuv "l'shanosa" with respect to Rus.  There are some sefardim who follow this minhag of mes sofrim, but I am not aware of any ashkenaz practice like it.

2) The Chok Yaakov (OC 473) has a chidush din that if you did not say she'hechiyanu on Shavuos, you may say it during the tashlumin days up to a week after the chag.  It is very difficult to understand how this can be the case when those days are regular weekdays.  Maharil Diskin tries to muster a defense of the Chok Yaakov by suggesting, also a big chidush, that you can fulfill the mitzvah l'hakbil pnei rabbo ba'regel during those tashlumin days and therefore they have some vestige of Y"T to them.  He then rejects this as sufficient basis for reciting she'hechiyanu, as there is no mitzvah if the rav is mochel.  This implies that the chiyuv l'hakbil pnei rabbo is a din in kavod ha'rav (Rashi in Chagiga 3a says this explicitly), and hence is subject to mechila, not a din in talmud torah (the Rambam quotes the din in Hil Talmud Torah), to visit your rebbe in order to learn something from him on Y"T.  My son pointed out that R' Chaim Kanievsky says it is a din in the kedushas ha'yom of the Y"T, part of how you celebrate the day.  Don't know where he got that from in Rishonim.

3) The Mishna in Bikurim 3:4 writes that once the procession bringing bikurim reaches Har haBayis, even someone as important as a king has to personally take his basket in hand and carry up to the Mikdash.  In our parsha (Naso) the Torah tells regarding the wagons donated by the Nesiim, "Va'yavi'u es korbanam... va'yakrivu osam lifnei haMishkan." (7:3)  Why the need to mention "va'yakrivum" after "va'yavi'u?"  Rashi explains that Moshe was hesitant and did not want to accept the gifts of the Nesiim, so they had to wait at the entrance to the Mishkan until Hashem gave the go ahead to take their gifts.  Netziv, however, explains that the pasuk is telling is that the Nesiim themselves were the ones who brought the wagons -- they did not send them by wagon driver or with a servant.  Similarly, the gemara (Pesachim 65b) writes that after the korban pesach was shechted, each person would personally carry his korban home with the hide -- they did not give it to a servant or anyone else to shlep for them.  Kavod for a mitzvah means taking a personal interest in seeing that it is done, not delegating the task to someone else. 

4) In previous years I wrote that staying up all night and learning while half awake does not accomplish much.  To be meyasheiv the minhag, it seems that staying up all night is not a kiyum of talmud torah, but is a kiyum of the mitzvah to remember ma'amad Har Sinai.  (Similarly, I heard R' Aharon Kahn shlit"a explain that the reason according to many shitos we read the dibros with ta'am elyon only on Shavuos is as a kiyum of the mitzvah to remember ma'amad Har Sinai, which is when we got the 10 dibros.  All the other times we read the parsha as a regular krias ha'torah = a kiyum of talmud torah b'rabim, and therefore we read with the regular trop that divides the sentences into pesukim, not dibros.)