Judaism- An Introduction, page 28
Where true security lies – Sukkot
The last of the Pilgrim festivals is a deliberate reminder of the Jewish people’s dependence on God. ‘Sukkot’ means ‘huts’, ‘booths’, or ‘tabernacles’ and the festival takes its name from the period when the ancient Israelites had no permanent homes but only temporary shelters. This was during their long journey through the desert after the exodus from Egypt to the land of Canaan. Like Pesah, this festival attempts to recreate the conditions of the past in order for the events to become present experience. In Leviticus 23:42, Jews are commanded to ‘live in booths for seven days’ and so the festival of Sukkot is observed as a re-enactment of this original dependence on God. The psalmist speaks of God hiding him ‘in his sukkah in the day of trouble, … under the cover of his tent’ (Psalm 27:5). Thus the sukkah becomes a symbol of reliance on God for protection and strength when all other security is gone. So the central feature of this festival is the building of a sukkah.
A sukkah must have certain characteristics. It must have at least three walls – the fourth side may be left open – made of material that can withstand the wind. Often the wall of the house or garage forms one wall and the others are of a temporary nature. It must have a particular kind of roof with features deliberately designed to encourage Jews to reflect on God as creator in contrast to the solidity of a permanent house in which people are more naturally inclined to put their trust. The roof must be made of plants which cannot be used for food. These plants must be in their natural state (boards of wood cannot be used) and detached from the ground (the branches of a growing tree cannot be used). It must be possible to see the sky through it and it must not be so dense that a heavy rain cannot come through. It must not have an additional covering, for example, an overhanging balcony.
Synagogues often have a room with a sliding roof which can be drawn back. In place of the roof is positioned a covering, made according to the requirements for the roof of a sukkah. This room then becomes a sukkah. The Rabbis speak of adorning the mitzvot. So the sukkah, whether in a private garden or synagogue, is made as attractive as possible especially with hanging fruit.
Since Sukkot, like the other two Pilgrim festivals, is also a harvest festival (Leviticus 23:39 refers to the gathering in of ‘the produce of the land’ at this time), the sukkot could well represent the shelters of the farmers bringing in the harvest, who lived on the job.
Certainly God’s provision of the harvest is still recalled at Sukkot. It is the final harvest of the year and takes place from 15–22 Tishrei, in the autumn. Like Pesah, the first and the last days of the festival are holy days, on which all work except the preparation of food is prohibited. (Conservative and Reform operate the same guidelines as to what should and should not be done at the festivals as those suggested for Shabbat.) There is some variation in practice as to how much time needs to be spent in the sukkah to fulfil the precepts of the Torah. In Israel, many Jews sleep in the sukkah for the seven days. However, in countries like Britain and the US where the climate in late September or early October can be quite cold, most Jews simply eat in it. Even this mitzvah does not apply to someone who is ill or if it is raining. The Talmud is critical of someone who tries to prove his piety by staying in the sukkah at times not required by the Torah. Nonetheless, some effort has to be made. This is why the festival is celebrated not in the spring, when the exodus occurred, but in the autumn, when sitting in a sukkah is more likely to entail some discomfort through cold. Hospitality is an essential aspect of the sukkah and people often visit friends to share refreshments.
The four plants
The second most distinctive ritual of Sukkot is holding in the hand four plants. The mitzvah for this, as for the sukkah, comes in Leviticus 23. In verse 40, we read:
On the first day you shall take the fruit of majestic trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days.
Since this festival concludes the harvest in Israel, these plants are symbols of God’s provision. The meaning of the Hebrew rendered ‘fruit of majestic trees’ is uncertain but it is taken to connote the etrog, a citrus fruit which looks rather like a lemon but tastes and smells quite different. The ‘branches of palm trees’ are called the lulav and the ‘boughs of leafy trees’ are represented by myrtle. These, together with willows, constitute the ‘four species’, the arba minim. Why these four particular plants were originally chosen is not altogether clear, but they are understood by the Rabbis to be the biblical requirement.
Many Jews think that there is symbolism attached to the arba minim, though, as often with such matters, they are not agreed on what it is. One midrash links each species with a different part of the body, taking the etrog as the heart, the lulav as the backbone, the myrtle as the eye, and the willow as the mouth. Another interprets the four plants as indicating different types of character, taking taste as standing for the Torah and scent as standing for good works. On this interpretation, the etrog, having both taste and scent, represents someone who knows the Torah and practises it; the fruit of the lulav, having taste but no scent, represents someone learned in the Torah but who does not do good deeds; the myrtle, having scent but no taste, represents someone who does good deeds but does not know the Torah; and the willow, having neither scent nor taste, represents someone who is both ignorant and selfish. This, the most popular of the many interpretations, suggests that no one must be left out of the Jewish community. Each person, with his or her strengths and weaknesses, combines with others to constitute God’s people. In terms of humanity at large, this reflects a generous yet realistic view of human nature. The arba minim symbolize that it takes all sorts to make a world. On each day of the festival, the four plants feature during morning prayers in the synagogue (except on Shabbat in Orthodox communities owing to the restriction on carrying in a public domain). The etrog is held in the left hand, while in the other are three myrtle twigs and two willows tied to the lulav. A blessing is recited for the command to take the lulav (as the largest, representing the whole group). Many communities not only hold but also wave the lulav as they recite the Hallel (festive psalms). This waving is done in all directions, probably symbolizing that God is everywhere.
The obligation to rejoice
Sukkot is called ‘the season of our rejoicing’ in response to the command in Leviticus 23:40. The emphasis on rejoicing is seen in Judaism at many points, for instance, in rites of passage and on Shabbat. It is particularly strong at Sukkot and on the days which conclude the festive season begun, three weeks before, with the New Year. In ancient times there was, during Sukkot, a festive procession to and from the spring which supplied the water for the Temple. Water was poured on the altar as a great offering of thanks for the rainy season about to begin. In celebration of water vital for any future harvest, there would be dancing to flutes, harps, and cymbals. The exuberance of the water offering is reflected in the Mishnah’s comment: ‘He who has not witnessed the joy of the water drawing has never in his life experienced real joy’ (Sukkah 5:1). There is still today a meal in the evening celebrating the water drawing. On the seventh day of Sukkot, there is a procession with the Torah scrolls and the lulav and etrog round the bimah in the synagogue seven times. Prayers are recited with the refrain Hoshanah (‘Save us’). This day now has the name Hoshanah Rabbah (‘the Great Hosannah’). After the final circuit, the willows are beaten against the floor or chairs until the leaves fall off, suggesting the shedding of sins. The penitential mood of the High Holy Days thus resurfaces, as seen in a number of features such as the wearing of the white kittel (shroud). The plea is thus for God’s saving.
SIMHAT TORAH
The same sense pervades the eighth day of the festival commanded in Leviticus 23:39 and Numbers 29:35 as a day of complete rest. This is, in effect, a separate festival and so, like all festivals, it begins with the kiddush and ends with the concluding Havdalah.
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Insight
It is important to understand that kiddush and Havdalah are part of other festivals besides Shabbat. They emphasize the holiness of the day(s) of each festival by setting them apart from ordinary time.
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It is called Shemini Atzeret (‘the eighth day of assembly’). A central feature of the musaf (additional service) on Shemini Atzeret is the prayer for rain. Orthodox Jews outside Israel observe Shemini Atzeret for two days. The second of these two days came, sometime after the eleventh century CE, to be known as Simhat Torah (‘the Rejoicing of the Law’). In Israel, Shemini Atzeret and Simhat Torah are celebrated on the same day. Reform Jews, also keeping Shemini Atzeret for only one day, celebrate Simhat Torah on the same day. This is the only occasion when Reform celebrates a festival on a different day from that kept in Orthodox synagogues in the Diaspora.
Simhat Torah can only be described as an explosion of joy. While the festival of Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah and the whole festival of Sukkot is characterized by rejoicing, it is this day which above all expresses the joy of the Jewish religion. The synagogue becomes a place of great exuberance. All the Torah scrolls are taken out of the ark and carried round the bimah seven times (taken to represent the march round Jericho described in Joshua 6), with everyone singing, dancing (sometimes out into the streets), and clapping as they process. Many people are called up to read from the Torah. The greatest honour goes to the one who reads the final portion of Deuteronomy and to the one who then reads the first portion of Genesis. They are called ‘bridegrooms’ and they represent the community joined to the Torah as a bridegroom to a bride. There is sometimes a tallit (prayer shawl) over the heads of the readers like the hupah at a wedding.
The description of the scene which is best known to non-Jews comes from the seventeenth-century diarist, Samuel Pepys. Following his visit to a Sefardi synagogue in London 1663, he writes:
But Lord, to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more; and indeed, I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this.
There may well have been services at Simhat Torah where riotous behaviour has been granted too much licence, but Pepys’ description assumes a western, aesthetic point of view. We have a different viewpoint in Chaim Potok’s account of Simhat Torah, in his novel, In the Beginning. A vivid paragraph concludes:
The noise inside the synagogue poured out into the night, an undulating, swelling and receding and thinning and growing sound. The joy of dancing with the Torah, holding it close to you, the words of God to Moses at Sinai. I wondered if gentiles ever danced with their Bible.
Simhat Torah is a post-talmudic festival. It is based on a story about King Solomon celebrating when he finished reading the Torah. So the final portion of the Torah, Deuteronomy 33:1–34:12 is read and, so that the cycle is not broken, the first portion of the Torah, Genesis 1:1–2:3, follows. The festival is an expression not of logic but of jubilation at God’s having given the Jewish people his Torah by which to live. Whether the festivities are fitting depends, as a rabbi once said in his Simhat Torah sermon, not just on whether we ‘rejoice with the Torah’ but on whether we ‘conduct ourselves so that the Torah rejoices with us’.
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THINGS TO REMEMBER
Pesah is a very important festival, celebrating the beginnings of the Jewish people, when God delivered them from slavery in Egypt.
It is also known as ‘the festival of unleavened bread’. The purpose of avoiding leaven during Pesah is to recreate for the Jew of whatever time and place the physical conditions of the exodus from Egypt.
The name ‘pesah’ may be connected with the Hebrew for the ‘skipping’ of newborn lambs in the spring or with God’s ‘passing over’ the home of the Israelites during the deadly plague of the first born in Egypt.
The highlight of this freedom festival is the opening meal, the seder. This proceeds according to a unique liturgical and educational text known as the Haggadah.
The symbols and stories of the seder are designed to remember, in the sense of reliving, the experience of the exodus.
On the second day of Pesah, Jews begin counting the days to the next festival, Shavuot.
Shavuot is the Feast of Weeks, falling seven weeks after Pesah. Because of this 50-day interval, it also takes the name ‘Pentecost’.
Shavuot concludes or completes Pesah by celebrating the giving of the Torah to Moses on Sinai. The thought is that freedom from slavery is to enable freedom for service.
The last of the three Pilgrim/Foot Festivals is Sukkot, celebrating God’s protection of the Israelites during their 40-year journey from Egypt through the wilderness.
The central feature of this festival is a sukkah (tabernacle/booth) deliberately designed as a temporary shelter to remind Jews of their dependence on God.
The second most distinctive ritual of Sukkot is the arba minim. These four species of plant are taken as reminders of the variety of people making up the Jewish community and the world at large.
At the end of Sukkot comes Simhat Torah. This joyous festival celebrates the cycle of Torah readings in the synagogue.
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15
The New Year and the Day of Atonement
In this chapter you will learn:
how the New Year and the Day of Atonement came to be the most important days in the Jewish calendar
about the music and words used to express a sense of repentance and a new start
about the origins and purpose of fasting on the Day of Atonement.
The importance of The High Holy Days
Jews regard the first day of the month of Tishrei as beginning a new calendar year. Leviticus 23:24 says that ‘a day of complete rest, a holy convocation commemorated with trumpet blasts’ is to be observed on ‘the seventh month, on the first day of the month’ (compare Numbers 29:1). Counting Nisan (the time of the exodus) as the first month, this brings us to 1 Tishrei. It is only in post-biblical Jewish literature that this day is designated Rosh Hashanah (‘the New Year’, literally ‘the Head of the Year’).
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Insight
This interpretation of Leviticus 23:24 is the key to understanding the date of Rosh Hashanah. Confusion arises if the first month of the Jewish Year, Nisan, is identified with Rosh Hashanah, the New Year in the Jewish calendar.
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In the Mishnah we find this day marking the beginning of a penitential season (Rosh Hashanah 16b). It is celebrated as the birthday of the world and, in particular, of the human race. Attention is, therefore, focused on God as creator, to whom people are answerable for how they live. Final judgement for the year will be passed on the tenth and last day of this season of penitence, giving people time to reflect and repent. So the recurrent phrase in the liturgy of this season is: ‘Remember us unto life, for You, O King, delight in life; inscribe us in the Book of Life, for Your sake, O God of life’ and the greeting exchanged among Jews at this season is: ‘May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.’
Everything about this period is designed to help the individual members of the Jewish community to appreciate their significance in a sort of cosmic drama and to encourage the strenuous effort required if they are to recognize all that is wrong in their relationships with God and with other people, and to make amends. It is, then, a time when serious new year resolutions are built into the liturgy and customs of the calendar. The ten days of penitence culminate in Yom Kippur (the ‘Day of Atonement’), the holiest day of the Jewish year. Rosh Hashanah, observed in Israel as well as in the Diaspora for two days, and Yom Kippur constitute the ‘High Holy Days’. Stressing the need for reverence of God, they are also referred to as Yamim Noraim (the ‘Days of Awe’).
GETTING TO THE HEART OF THE ‘MATTER’
It could well be argued that to understand the High Holy Days is to understand Judaism. Repentance and atonement stand at the height of Jewish spiritual life. Many would say, though perhaps using different terminology, that they lie at the heart of human life in general. Certainly, the need to face up to mistakes, to let go of resentments, to feel that others have let go of resentments towards you, and to feel the genuine chance of a fresh start are vital parts of much experience. From the Jewish point of view, the designer of the whole enterprise is the one to whom to turn for such renewal.
There are, however, two difficulties in trying to understand these days from the outside. First, it may be asked: ‘Whose High Holy Days are we looking at?’ For there is great variety of concept and observance. Some would lay the greater stress on obligation while others would lay it on emotion, as illustrated by the story about a Hasid who was the only one in the synagogue able to blow the ram’s horn. When he stood up to blow, he was so moved that he burst into tears. A Lithuanian rabbi said to the Hasid: ‘We are commanded to blow, so blow.’ What of the many Jews not affiliated to any synagogue and yet who make a special effort to be present at this period especially on Yom Kippur? And what does the liturgy of this period, with its affirmation that God organizes and judges his world, mean to Jews after the Holocaust? Second, it may be asked whether it is actually possible to plumb someone else’s faith. This series of Teach Yourself books about World Faiths rests on the assumption that it is possible at least to get some inkling of it. The best way of getting close to the experience of the High Holy Days is through their liturgy.
