Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler, Congregation Am Echod in Lindenhurst
This coming Sunday evening, we begin
the holiday of Sukkot.
Sukkot is maybe our best holiday.
After all, amidst all our myriads of commandments pertaining to social justice
or ethics or morality or elegant subtleties of ritual practice, only one time a
year are we literally commanded to be joyful and only joyful: Sukkot.
That’s a commandment we should all
be able to get behind.
And Sukkot has layers, too-- it’s
not just about the party. We build our Sukkot not only as reminders of the way
our ancestors harvested their crop at this time of year, and not only as and as
reminders of how we dwelt in temporary shelters during our wandering in the
wilderness after the Exodus.
We wave lulav and etrog not only to
mark the fruitfulness of this time of harvest, but also to remind us of the
praying for rain that is so integral to the holiday.
One of the things we forget most
often today about Sukkot is that it is really about rain.
Traditionally, we don’t just make
the blessing over the lulav and etrog and then point it in all directions:
we wave it, shaking it so the fronds of the palm branch shift and
brush, the willow and myrtle rustle. And the sound that it makes is the sound
of rainfall.
In ancient times, there was a water
offering made in the Temple, when water was poured out at the corner of the
altar, praying that the late autumn and winter rains will fall.
This offering was at the center of a
massive public rejoicing, called the simchat
beit ha-sho’evah, the rejoicing of the house of drawing [water].
The Rabbis of the Talmud say: anyone who had not seen the simchat beit sho’evah had never truly
seen joy.
There was feasting, drinking, music,
and games.
The Zohar teaches us that though we
are judged on Yom Kippur, the decision sealed by Ne’ilah, the “verdict” is not
final until after Hoshanah Rabba, the end of Sukkot.
For this reason, prayers for
prosperity, life, health, growth-- all parts of the prayers for rain-- are all
continued through these days and weeks.
Rabbinic literature identifies water
as a symbol or metaphor for Torah (one quenches the thirst of the body, the
other quenches the thirst of the soul.
Just as we cannot live without
water, Jews cannot live without Torah.
It also meshes well with the
Kabbalistic imagery of the outpourings of Divine energy radiating from God - being
like water.
So it makes sense that Sukkot,
ending with Hoshanah Rabba, melds virtually seamlessly into the following
holiday, Shmini Atzeret, on which we say Geshem, the great prayer for rain, and
after which we begin adding the phrase "mashiv ha-ruach u-morid ha-geshem" (“Who makes the wind blow
and the rain fall”) to the Amidah prayer.
Part of what makes Sukkot so
amazing, and so interesting, is the way in which water and rejoicing come
together. And, in doing so, they reflect
the
· physical seasons of the year
· the agricultural concerns of our
ancestors
· and also the spiritual imagery of
our tradition
It is the perfect reflection of the
balance that Judaism tends to strike, finding meaning in both the physical and in the spiritual.
And so it is - almost
immediately after Yom Kippur we go outside and build sukkot: not because we are
done with prayer, introspection, and preparation for a new year… but
because the logical next step is to take what we’ve learned and apply it to our
lives.
Shana Tova!
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