JewsByChoice.Org

Hi All,

I hope you all had a happy and healthy Rosh Hashana, and that you have an easy fast on Yom Kippur!  Sorry this is a bit late, but here is the newest holiday page, available in the Jewish Living - Holidays section of the website.  Enjoy!

Four days after the end of Yom Kippur, on Tishrei 15, we usher in the festival of Sukkot.  The last of the shalosh regalim, the three pilgrimage festivals, Sukkot is otherwise known as the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles.  The JPS translation of Vayikra (Leviticus) 23 provides some background:

Mark, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the yield of your land, you shall observe the festival of the Lord [to last] seven days: a complete rest on the first day, and a complete rest on the eighth day.  On the first day you shall take the product of hadar trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your G-d seven days.  You shall observe it as a festival of the Lord for seven days in the year; you shall observe it in the seventh month as a law for all time, throughout the ages.  You shall live in booths seven days; all the citizens in Israel shall live in booths, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I the Lord you G-d.

Sukkot is an earthy celebration.  We take our meals in the sukkah, which is specifically designed so it does not provide total protection from the weather.  A roof made of branches or latticework ensures that we can see the stars at night while inside the sukkah, and also feel the rain if it begins to fall.  In North America the leaves are turning to orange and red and yellow, the geese are flying south, and the north wind begins to blow this time of year, and spending time outside in the sukkah provides a poignant reminder of how exposed to the elements our people were in the journey from Egypt.

As the text from Vayikra makes clear, aside from the sukkah there are a couple of other important components of the festival.  The arba’at ha minim or arba minim - the “Four Species” - are an important aspect of our prayers during Sukkot.  We take up the citron (etrog), the date palm frond (lulav), the myrtle (hadas) and willow (aravah) branches, and together we raise them during hallel - a section of holiday Psalms in the siddur - and we shake them in a prescribed manner.   In the Kiddush for the festival we refer to it as “Z’man Simchateinu,” the “Festival of our Joy,” and after the spiritual work of the month of Elul and the Yamim Nora’im, the joy of Sukkot seems especially palpable.  In Israel, the first and last days of Sukkot carry Shabbat-like restrictions on work, and in the Diaspora’s Conservative and Orthodox communities, the first two and last two days have this distinction.  As such, we light candles and make kiddush over wine on each evening previous to these book-end days.

The last day of Sukkot proper (the seventh day) is called Hoshana Rabbah, and on that day the Hoshanot prayer is offered while making seven circuits of the synagogue (hakafot), as opposed to the normal one.  The willow branch is also removed from the lulav and is beaten on the ground, in the words of Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin,  “a final act of riddance and contrition for all that we have done wrong.”  In Israel, and in Diaspora Reform and Reconstructionist communities, the following day is a combined holiday called Shemini Atzteret and Simchat Torah; in Diapora Orthodox and Conservative communities, each of these has its own day.  Shemini Atzeret is described in Bamidbar (Numbers) 29:35, in the JPS translation:

“On the eighth day you shall hold a solemn gathering; you shall not work at your occupations.”

Rabbi Joseph Telshkin points out two important characteristics of this day.  First, as it is the beginning of the rainy season in Israel, we offer the Geshem prayer, the prayer for rain.  And second, as has been noted by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, Shemini Atzeret is a “Zionist holiday,” in that it has provided Jews from all over the earth a day of real connection to the ecology of Eretz Yisrael.  By praying for rain in Israel, we are affirming our connection to our holy Land, its seasons, and its life.  While we share the joy inspired by the bounty of the Land of Israel during Tu b’Shevat, on Shemini Atzeret we make a spiritual investment in its fruitfulness to come.

Simchat Torah, the festival of rejoicing in the Torah, marks the end of the holidays of Tishrei.  During the evening service we read the last few verses of the Torah, then rewind the scroll(s) and read the first few verses.  This day marks the restarting of the annual cycle of weekly Torah readings, with B’reishit coming the following Shabbat.  Before we reroll the Torah scrolls, we remove all of them from the ark, and we dance with them around the synagogue.  Through this celebration we acknowledge the core place the Torah has in our lives as religious Jews.  In some congregations those in attendance sit in a long row shoulder to shoulder, and one of the scrolls is rerolled across their outstretched arms or on a table in front of them.  In this way those who rarely have aliyot are able to see all of the Torah pass in front of their eyes, with rabbis, gabbai’im, and teachers pointing out important or interesting sections such as the Song of the Sea, the Ten Commandments, the Shema and v’Ahavta, and the breaks between books.

There are many Sukkot resources online.  First, here are some general ones:

Aish HaTorah has a traditional Orthodox approach and offers this page on Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah.

The Union for Reform Judaism’s Sukkot page is available here, with their Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah site here.

MyJewishLearning.com has and extensive Sukkot site here.  Their Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah resources are also useful.

Chabad has a great page on Sukkot, and this one on Simchat Torah.

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism offers this page on the High Holidays, with a few Sukkot resources.

The Jewish Outreach Institute has this page on the festival.

These links will connect you to either companies which sell pre-fab sukkah kits, or to instructions for building your own sukkah:

The Sukkah Project

Sukkah Kits

The Sieger Sukkah

SukkahSoul

MyJewishLearning sukkah instructions

KavanaSeattle

Chag Sameach!