As a seven-day holiday that begins on the 14th day of the seventh (Tishrei) month, two weeks into the new year, Sukkot has always occupied a position of importance on the Jewish calendar. Recognizing the seven-day foundation of the week, it’s clear that Sukkot’s placement in the calendar is no coincidence. Simply called “The Holiday” He-Chag–Sukkot occupied an important agricultural place as it marked the end of the summer harvest and then hoped and prayed for beginning of the winter rains. It has been argued that Yom Kippur was actually a preparatory purification for the intense rituals surrounding Sukkot and its sacrifices. As an agricultural nation, dependent on the winter rains, the sacrifices and prayers of Sukkot were believed to be essential for those rains to arrive.Given Sukkot’s importance in the calendar, the layering of additional meanings on top of the original role should come as no surprise. Perhaps the most [...]

Recognizing how Jewish traditions change over time reveals the beauty of our people’s adaptability. The primary observance of Sukkot—the building of a Sukkah—is a great example.  There’s only one sentence in the Torah that links the observance of the holiday to the booths that we primarily identify with Sukkot. In fact, there’s a rather strange recounting in the book of Nehemiah that suggests that the observance of Sukkot was actually forgotten for hundreds of years. Scholars suggest that it’s the Bible’s way of introducing a custom that previously was NOT associated with the holiday. Up until Nehemiah’s time, Sukkot was observed through Temple sacrifices. With the movement of large populations of Jews outside of Israel into Babylon an additional layer was added to the holiday: booths.  The sentence in Leviticus was inserted centuries later to justify what had become common practice among the Babylonian Jews! It’s even possible that the word Sukkot did [...]