Sukkot
Jewish Holidays · 5articles
Why does the order of the ushpizin include precisely Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David, and what does this order say about a person's spiritual journey?
The order is not chronological: Joseph comes after Moses and Aaron, because the ushpizin are arranged according to the seven attributes, from kindness to kingship. Seven days in a temporary dwelling as a map for building a person, and seven questions we invite into ourselves.
Is the sukkah really a psychological test: does a person feel safe because of the walls around them, or because of something deeper?
"Go out of your permanent dwelling and sit in a temporary dwelling." As a psychological reading, the sukkah is a yearly experiment in what truly gives a person security, and seven days at the end of which we return home, having learned that the walls are only walls.
What is the deep connection between Sukkot and the Garden of Eden, and do the four species hint at things that happened at the beginning of human history?
Rabbi Abba of Acco identifies the Tree of Knowledge as the etrog, and the Ramban sees in the commandment of the four species an appeasement for the sin that was committed with it. In the Garden of Eden man took a fruit and lost the garden, and on Sukkot he takes a fruit to begin the way back.
What is the surprising connection between the festival of Sukkot and all the nations of the world, and why does this Jewish festival in particular take on such a universal meaning?
Seventy bulls over the seven days of the festival, corresponding to seventy nations, Zechariah's vision of the nations going up to celebrate Sukkot, and a single bull on Shemini Atzeret. And why it is precisely in the small sukkah that the festival opens up to all of humanity.
Why, precisely after the Days of Awe, when we stand in awe before the Holy One, does a festival come whose central commandment is to rejoice?
Sukkot is not the opposite of the Days of Awe, it is their outcome. "You shall rejoice before the Lord", the midrash on "the first for the reckoning of sins", and the flimsy sukkah that teaches that what holds a person up was never the house and its walls.
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