​
Sukkot
​by Rabbi Seth Riemer

Sukkot, which this year begins at sundown on Wednesday, October 16, earned the moniker heHag / “The Holiday” because of its prominence - indeed, starring role - in our yearly festival calendar.  Its popularity was so great that, scholars tell us, during the period of the Maccabean revolt, because Jewish people could not worship at the Temple in Jerusalem when it was occupied by Antiochus’s troops, following the city’s liberation from those enemy forces, a new eight-day festival, Hanukah, was created to stand-in for the canceled and much-missed Sukkot celebration.  

Sukkot in that era was an occasion for widespread revelry and intense public worship.  It was, indeed, the most important Jewish holiday (besides Shabbat).  Its traditions - including building and dwelling in sukkot* (to commemorate Israel’s forty years of wandering homeless in the wilderness), waving lulav and etrog (four plant species:  palm frond, willow and myrtle leaves, and citron) and circling the synagogue sanctuary with them, home rituals (candle-lighting, kiddush and holiday banquet), and (on Sukkot’s concluding day known as Hoshanah Rabah) willow-beating ceremony to conclude the penitential season and initiate petitionary prayers for rain - have carried down through the ages.  

In Israel, sukkot crowd the private and public landscape:  in yards and public squares and on mirpasot (verandas or balconies) and rooftops.  Unllke Pesah, Sukkot’s hol hamo’ed (secular intermediate period) does not lead into a final day (in Israel) or two (outside of Israel) of holy time but goes right into another holiday, Shemini Atzeret (beginning this year at sundown on Wednesday, October 23). This major festival (referred to - along with Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Pesah, and Shavuot - in the Torah) is unknown to most Jews except for those (in Israel a large number; outside of Israel a minority) who are particularly religiously observant.  About its purpose, the Torah provides few clues, only commanding our ancestors only to refrain from work, make ritual sacrifices and hold an atzeret (Numbers 29:35).  That’s an obscure word perhaps referring to a mandatory public assembly.  

Outside of Israel, the second day of Shemini Atzeret has its own name:  Simhat Torah (“Torah Joy”).  On this occasion the annual Torah reading cycle is concluded and lively festivities (including at times riotously festive dancing and drinking) take place; in Israel those revelries are combined, in a one-day Shemini Atzeret celebration, with that holiday’s more somber activities such as lighting of yahrzeit (memorial) candles and Yizkor (the memorial service also performed toward the end of Pesah, Shavuot and Yom Kippur).  

Look on our newsletter’s calendar for information about CBE events relating to Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret.