Sukkot: The Dual Festival
In each of the three major passages of the Torah where the festivals are set out in detail, there is something unusual about Sukkot. Consider first the list in Deuteronomy 16, where the emphasis is on the civic dimension of the festivals as occasions of social inclusion, when not only “you, your sons, and daughters,” celebrate but also “your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless, and the widows who live in your towns.”
One of the keywords of Deuteronomy as a whole is s-m-ḥ, collective celebration. It occurs only once in the book of Exodus, once in Leviticus (specifically in the context of Sukkot), and once in the book of Numbers. It appears twelve times in Deuteronomy. And in the passage dealing with the festivals, it occurs not once but twice in connection with Sukkot:
Be joyful [vesamaḥta] at your festival…. For seven days celebrate the festival to the Lord your God at the place the Lord will choose. For the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete [vehayita akh same’aḥ]. (Deut. 16:14–15)
Deuteronomy makes no mention of joy in connection with Passover. It mentions it once in relation to Shavuot. In the context of Sukkot, it refers to it twice. Doubtless it was this that led to the traditional description of Sukkot as zeman simḥatenu, “the season of our joy.” But why a double joy?
The second strange feature appears in this parasha, the only place in the Torah to specify the two special practices of Sukkot. This is the first:
Beginning with the fifteenth day of the seventh month, after you have gathered the crops of the land, celebrate the festival to the Lord for seven days…. On the first day you are to take choice fruit from the trees, and palm fronds, leafy branches, and willows of the brook, and rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. (Lev. 23:39–40)
This is a reference to the arba minim, the “four kinds” – palm branch, citron, myrtle, and willow leaves – taken and waved on Sukkot. The second command is quite different:
Live in booths for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in booths, so your descendants will know that I made the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. (Lev. 23:42–43)
This is the command to leave our houses and live in the temporary dwelling that gives Sukkot its name: the festival of “booths, huts, tabernacles,” an annual reminder of the temporary and portable homes in which the Israelites lived during their journey through the wilderness.
No other festival has this dual symbolism. Not only are the “four kinds” and the tabernacle different in character: they are even seemingly opposed to one another. The “four kinds” and the rituals associated with them are about rain. They were, says Maimonides,1Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, III:43. the most readily available products of the land of Israel, reminders of the fertility of the land. By contrast, the command to live for seven days in booths, with only leaves for a roof, presupposes the absence of rain. If it rains on Sukkot we are exempt from the command (for as long as the rain lasts, and providing it is sufficiently strong to spoil food on the table).
The difference goes deeper still. On the one hand, Sukkot is the most universalistic of all festivals. The prophet Zechariah foresees the day when it will be celebrated by all humanity:
The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day the Lord will be One, and His name the only name…. Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. If any of the peoples of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, they will have no rain. If the Egyptian people do not go up and take part, they will have no rain. (Zech. 14:9, 16–17)
Hence the interpretation given by the sages about the list of the festivals in the book of Numbers. On Sukkot, seventy bulls were sacrificed in the course of the festival (Num. 29:12–34). The sages say they correspond to the seventy nations (the traditional number of civilisations; see Gen. 10). Following the cues in Zechariah, they said that “On the festival [of Sukkot], the world is judged in the matter of rain.”2Mishna Rosh HaShana 1:2.
There is nothing distinctively Jewish about the need for rain. All countries, especially in the Middle East, needed it.
At the same time, though, it is also the most particularist of festivals. When we sit in the sukka we recall Jewish history – not just the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, but also the entire experience of exile. The sukka is defined as a “temporary dwelling” (dirat arai). It is the most powerful symbol of Jewish history. No other nation could see its home not as a castle, a fortress, or a triumphal arch, but as a fragile tabernacle. No other nation was born, not in its land, but in the desert. Far from being universalistic, Sukkot is intensely particularistic, the festival of a people like no other, whose only protection was its faith in the sheltering wings of the Divine Presence.
It is almost as if Sukkot were two festivals, not one.
It is, and therein lies its unique character. Although all the festivals are listed together, they in fact represent two quite different cycles. The first is the cycle of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. These tell the particularistic story of Jewish identity and history: the Exodus (Passover), the revelation at Mount Sinai (Shavuot), and the journey through the wilderness (Sukkot). Celebrating them, we re-enact the key moments of Jewish memory. We celebrate what it is to be a Jew.
There is, however, a second cycle: the festivals of the seventh month: Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur are not only about Jews and Judaism. They are about God and humanity as a whole. The language of the prayers is different. We say: “Instil Your awe upon all Your works, and fear of You on all that You have created.” The liturgy is strikingly universalistic. The Days of Awe are about the sovereignty of God over all humankind. On them, we reflect on the human, not just the Jewish, condition.
The two cycles reflect the dual aspect of God: as creator and as redeemer. As creator, God is universal. We are all in God’s image, formed in His likeness. We share a covenant of human solidarity, the Noahide covenant. We are fellow citizens of the world God made and entrusted to our care. As redeemer, however, God is particular. Whatever His relationship to other nations (and He has a relationship with other nations – so Amos and Isaiah insist), Jews know Him through His saving acts in Israel’s history: Exodus, revelation, and the journey to the Promised Land.
No sooner have we identified the two cycles than we see what makes Sukkot unique. It is the only festival belonging to both. It is part of the cycle of Jewish history (Passover-Shavuot-Sukkot), and part of the sequence of the seventh month (Rosh HaShana-Yom Kippur-Sukkot). Hence the double joy.
The “four kinds” represent the universality of the festival. They symbolise nature, rain, the cycle of the seasons – things common to all humanity. However, the sukka itself, the tabernacle, represents the singular character of Jewish history with its repeated experiences of exile and homecoming and its long journey across the wilderness of time.
In a way not shared by any other festival, Sukkot celebrates the dual nature of Jewish faith: the universality of God and the particularity of Jewish existence. We all need rain. We are all part of nature. We are all dependent on the complex ecology of the created world. Hence the “four kinds.” But each nation, civilisation, religion is different. As Jews, we are heirs to a history unlike that of any other people: small, vulnerable, suffering exile after exile, yet surviving. Hence the sukka.
Humanity is formed out of our commonalities and differences. Our differences give us our identity. Our commonalities give us our humanity. If we were completely different, we could not communicate. If we were completely alike, we would have nothing to say. Sukkot brings both together: our uniqueness as a people and our participation in the universal fate of humankind.