Sukkot

 

Four days after Yom Kippur, Jews world-wide celebrate the holiday of Sukkot. The holiday is celebrated from the 15th of Tishri through the 21st or 22nd of Tishri, depending if you live in Israel or in the Diaspora.

After the harvest from your threshing floor and your vineyards, you shall celebrate the Feast of Booths for seven days. (Deuteronomy 16:13)

The Bible also says:

You shall live in booths seven days in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. (Leviticus 23:42-43)

 

 

A major agricultural festival, Sukkot is also the third of the  three pilgrimage holidays, Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot.

Sukkot also marks the end of the harvest. Traditionally, this was the time for grapes to be gathered and made into raisins or wine; for olives to be picked and pressed into oil.

People  would go to the temple in Jerusalem to offer thanks. They built sukkot to remember how Israel built booths in the desert and stayed in them for the seven days of the pilgrimage feast..

This is also why Sukkot is known as hag-ha-asif, the festival of ingathering. The Torah says:

You shall celebrate the festival of ingathering, at the end of the year, when you gather in your labors out of the field. (Exodus 23:16)

There are some who argue that the sukkot with their open roofs bear more resemblance to the harvester's huts than they do with the dwellings the Jews lived in the desert.

Sukkot is a happy holiday.  King Solomon chose Sukkot as the holiday during which he consecrated the first temple. It was also the occasion every seven years for the ceremony hak'heil, the public reading of the Torah before the whole people (Deuteronomy 31:10-13).

The final day of Sukkot, called Shemini Atzeret, was reserved for a special set of sacrifices for the benefit of Israel and for a special prayer for rainfall.

After the return from exile in Babylon, when the Jews returned to Israel under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, they were ready to embrace the Torah's commandments. The Jews, ecstatic to be reunited with the land, built sukkot out of olive, pine, myrtle, and palm branches. The importance of Sukkot continued during the second temple era, with pilgrims coming to Jerusalem from Jewish communities all over. They participated in praying and singing and joining in the religious processions. The etrog and the four species- palm, willow and myrtle, which are bundled together to make a lulav - became part of the ritual.

In modern times, the custom of building sukkot was reestablished in the early 1900s.

Standing Strong

A Messianic Jewish Congregation with an outreach to Believers in Israel