Sukkot-A Festival of Water
Oct 2, 2001 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Sukkot
The joy of Sukkot is offset by a pervasive concern about water. As we give thanks for the harvest just completed, we begin to worry about the bounty of the next one. But be mindful: it is the rainfall in Israel of which we speak.
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The Religious Value of Joy
Sep 24, 1999 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Sukkot
Sukkot at the Seminary is the loveliest of festivals. Rabbinical students are back from their high holiday jobs. The tension of officiating for the first or second time has dissipated and the gravity of the season lifted. Joined in community, we fill the synagogue with the songs of Hallel and the pageantry of the Lulav. A feeling of thanksgiving is in the air. Together we take our meals in the richly decorated Sukkot in the quadrangle which invigorate our sense of the natural world. Conversation, singing and a bit of Torah from an invited speaker enhance this fare.
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The Seventy Bulls of Sukkot
Oct 14, 2000 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Sukkot
Sukkot is the most joyous and universal of the three harvest festivals ordained by the Torah. It marks the end of the agricultural year as well as the summer harvest, and we are explicitly instructed by the Torah to rejoice with our family and community (Deuteronomy 16:17). In that spirit, the Rabbis turned the common noun, hag (festival), into the proper name of the holiday, he-Hag (the festival par excellence). They also designated Sukkot as “the season of our joy” in the prayers for the festival.
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Ritual in Our Lives
Sep 20, 2002 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Sukkot
When I was a youngster growing up in small-town America in the 1940s, the only sukkah in town stood behind the synagogue. It did service for the entire congregation. Even my father, the rabbi of our Conservative synagogue and devoutly observant, never seemed to entertain the idea of putting up a sukkah in our backyard. In those days, people had less time for domestic rituals and shied away from any public display of their Jewishness. The synagogue in Pottstown, a large, handsome, basilican structure on the main street, had become the last arena of individual and collective Jewish expression.
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What Is a Sukkah, Really?
Sep 30, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Sukkot
During the festival of Sukkot in 1974, while on sabbatical in Israel, the Schorsch family took a trip to Sharm El Sheikh on the Straits of Tiran.
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Connecting Pesah with Sukkot
Oct 10, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Pesah | Sukkot
The parallelism between Sukkot and Pesach is striking. The Torah scripts them to start on the fifteenth day of the month when the moon is full and to last for seven days. Originally agricultural festivals, their historical overlay links them both to the redemption from Egypt. In each case, the name of the festival derives from the ritual which is its most prominent feature. In tandem, the two anchor the changing of the seasons in the fall and the spring (the two times of year when the seasons actually change in the Middle East) in the biblical calendar. They are the axis on which that calendar turns.
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“This Is Water” and This Is Joy
Oct 18, 2008 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Sukkot
There is an almost organic progression from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. However, when we get caught up in preparations for the holidays, we risk missing the intended effect. From Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur we work on deconstructing ourselves and our worlds. We stand together and seek to expose our inner selves, leaving us vulnerable and open. The language of Yom Kippur prepares us for this feeling—we are not atoning for our sins as we do at the beginning of Leviticus when the laws of sacrifice are first introduced, but on another level altogether. As we learn during our Torah reading, on Yom Kippur we atone from sin (Lev. 16:30). Through the day we literally achieve a level of purity—during the S’lichot and Avodah services we recite over and over again the verse, “on this day we are purified.” At the end of Ne‘ilah, we are left spiritually lighter.
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Between Hope and Doubt
Oct 15, 2011 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Sukkot
After the High Holy Days, I sometimes feel torn between feelings of hope and feelings of doubt regarding humanity’s prospects for improvement. At the very least, it helps me to know that our ancient Sages understood this emotional tension.
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