10/23/2024
SUKKOT (TABERNACLES, SHACKS)
Hag Succot Sameach! Happy Succot!
This was our Succot picture from 5 years ago.
Sukkot is one of the three “pilgrim festivals” when Jews would travel to celebrate in Jerusalem.
ADONAI said to Moshe, “Tell the people of Israel, ‘On the fifteenth day of this seventh month is the feast of Sukkot for seven days to ADONAI. The first day is to be a holy convocation; do not do any kind of ordinary work. For seven days you are to bring an offering made by fire to ADONAI; on the eighth day you are to have a holy convocation and bring an offering made by fire to ADONAI; it is a day of public assembly; do not do any kind of ordinary work….
“‘But on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered the produce of the land, you are to observe the festival of ADONAI seven days; the first day is to be a complete rest and the eighth day is to be a complete rest. On the first day you are to take choice fruit, palm fronds, thick branches and river-willows, and celebrate in the presence of ADONAI your God for seven days. You are to observe it as a feast to ADONAI seven days in the year; it is a permanent regulation, generation after generation; keep it in the seventh month. You are to live in sukkot for seven days; every citizen of Israel is to live in a sukkah, so that generation after generation of you will know that I made the people of Israel live in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt; I am ADONAI your God.’” [Leviticus 23:33-36, 39-43]
Today we’re still doing this, just as Moses told us to do. Jewish families build a sukkah, a temporary structure, often using palm fronds for the roof. We eat in the sukkah; some families even sleep there. It’s traditional to do the mitzvoth beautifully. Therefore we don’t just put up a shack, we make a beautiful shack. It has become the custom to decorate the sukkah with fruit – pomegranates and dates – and with decorations, both store-bought and home-made. Every year Martha and I fold crepe-paper chains and make other decorations to hang from the roof of the sukkah. Leviticus 23:40 is expressed ceremonially with a lulav (a palm branch, two willow branches and three myrtle branches) waved together with an etrog (a citron, which is a citrus fruit), as blessings are said.
The last day of Sukkot is called Hoshanah Rabbah (literally, “the great ‘Please save us!’”). In the New Covenant Sukkot is noted at Yochanan 7:37-38 (CJB): “Now on the last day of the festival, Hoshana Rabbah, Yeshua stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him keep coming to me and drinking! Whoever puts his trust in me, as the Tanakh says, rivers of living water will flow from his inmost being!” Toward the end of Sukkot there was a ceremony in the Temple connected with water-drawing from the well of Siloam (Shiloach). Thus Yeshua connects his “living water” with the water taken from Siloam
This year Succot begins on Wednesday night.Hag same’ach! [Happy holiday!]
-- Martha
