SUKKOT AS THE CULMINATION OF THE HIGH HOLY DAYS

That’s not the usual view, so let me explain why I believe this to be the case, following the brilliant teaching of Rabbi Zelig Golden.

We undertake a repentance process during Elul.  That process is supposed to intensify during the Yamim Noraim, the ten awe full days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur.  Why?  Because in the words of the great prayer Unataneh Tokef, “on Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, who will live and who will die.” So we all learned get right with the divine, get right with your fellow humans so you will be written in the book of life.

But our ancestors had a much more down to earth motivation, in my view. Israel is a land of a wet season and a dry season. The rains in season, which are supposed to start immediately after Sukkot were a matter of life and death to our ancestors. Water is life.  Our ancestors believed wholeheartedly that the rains would come if they were in alignment with the divine and each other, and they would not come if they were not. 

In the words of Deuteronomy that we recite daily “So it will be, if you will listen to my commandments that I command you this day to love YHVH your God and to serve him with all your heart and soul, , then I will give your land’s showers at their time, early rain and late rain, and you’ll gather your grain and your wine and your oil.  And I’ll give vegetation in your field for your animals, and you’ll eat and be full (Deuteronomy 11:13-15)

This plea for rain manifests throughout Sukkot in the Simchat Beit Hashoeivah ritual and culminates during Hoshana Rabbah, the great pleading on the last day of Sukkot.

Simchat Beit Hashoeivah literally means rejoicing at the place of water drawing.  Every morning, when the Temple stood, there was a ritual unique to Sukkot where the priests poured water on the altar after the wine offering was poured. This is obviously a kind of sympathetic magic, that may the rains pour down on us just as we are pouring water on the altar.  Then in the evening, there was a big party with lots of dancing and music at the pool of Siloam from which the water was drawn.  There’s a famous quote from the Talmud "He who has not seen the rejoicing at the Place of the Water-Drawing has never seen rejoicing in his life." (Tractate Sukkah 5:1). 

Hoshana Rabbah is the great pleading that takes place on the last day of Sukkot proper.  What are we pleading for? Rain. Our ancestors wholeheartedly believed that their moral alignment with the divine influenced the rain or lack thereof. Drought was caused by moral blemish, and not by what we would call natural forces.

The traditional ritual of Hoshana Rabbah entails the making of seven counter clockwise circles while beating phallic shaped willow branches against the ground and offering pleadings for rain.  The counter clockwise motion is to bring down the rain from the sky.  The making of the circles of course is the same ritual binding that is present in the marriage ceremony.

I think it is a fairly obvious interpretation that what we have here is a form of ritual sexual intercourse between the phallic willows and the feminine earth.  This is a prayer for fertility.  Just as the rains from the heavens fertilize the earth, just as the kabbalists viewed rain as divine semen fertilizing the earth, so we pray for fertility.  I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that we are reenacting a divine marriage/intercourse between Father Sky and Mother Earth.

I agree with R. Zelig Golden that Sukkot is the culmination of the High Holy days.  The Zohar, the most important book of Jewish mysticism, teaches that on Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed and on Hoshana Rabbah it is delivered—who will live and who will die (Zohar, Parashat Vayechi 220b).

May we find our path to alignment and be blessed with our ecological equivalents of rain in season.