Sukkot: The Universal Festival

Rabbi Abraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook

“Succa is a very high level of joy…Joy emerges from renewal and the renewal of the succa is constant, therefore it is the ‘season of our joy’.” (Rav Kook, Notebook 2:212)

He elaborates:

“The perception that dawns on a person to see the world, not as finished, but in the process of continued becoming, ascending, developing-this changes one from being ‘under the sun’ to being ‘above the sun’, from the place where there is nothing new to the place where there is nothing old, where everything takes on new form. The joy of heaven and earth abide in them as on the day they were created.” (Orot HaKodesh 2:535)

The physical experience of the succa and the four species offers us the opportunity to experience and celebrate the fusion of heaven and earth. The Succot prayers. songs and celebrations direct us to the larger creation. Our Succa is not blocked off from the world. Everyone is invited to our Succa and we are invited to everyone else’s.

“We must liberate ourselves from confinement within our private concerns. This pervades our whole being so that all our thoughts focus only on our own destiny. This reduces us to the worst kind of smallness and brings upon us endless physical and spiritual distress. It is necessary to raise our thought, will and our basic preoccupations toward universality, to the inclusion of all, to the whole world, to humankind, to the Jewish people, to all existence. This will result in establishing even our private self on a proper basis.

The firmer our vision of universality, the greater the joy we will experience and the more we merit the grace of divine illumination…

The call to be committed always to the principle of universality, to the divine ensemble, where all things have their being, is the essence of the soul of the ‘tzaddikim-righteous’ who walk before God and whose delight is in the Creator.” (Ibid 3:147)

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

It is almost as if Sukkot were two festivals, not one.

It is. Although all the festivals are listed together, they in fact represent two quite different cycles. The first is the cycle of Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot. These tell the unique story of Jewish identity and history: the exodus (Pesach), the revelation at Mount Sinai (Shavuot), and the journey through the wilderness (Sukkot). Celebrating them, we reenact 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 Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are not only about Jews and Judaism. They are about G-d and humanity as a whole. The language of the prayers is different. We say, “Instill your awe upon all Your works, and fear of You on all that You have created.” The entire liturgy is strikingly universalist. The Days of Awe are about the sovereignty of G-d over all humankind. On them, we reflect on the human – not just the Jewish – condition.

The two cycles reflect the dual aspect of G-d: as creator and as redeemer. As creator, G-d is universal. We are all in G-d’s image, formed in His likeness. We share a covenant of human solidarity (the Noahide covenant). We are fellow citizens of the world G-d made and entrusted to our care. As redeemer, however, G-d 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.

Rabbi Benjamin Blech

But first fruits are not the final harvest. Shavuot cannot be the end of the cycle of festivals. How could God, who created the entire world, be content if only a small portion of humanity is dedicated to Him? History must bring about recognition on the part of all; from first fruits we must eventually proceed to an ingathering of all the crops in the fields, a complete harvest.

If Passover commemorates the Exodus and Shavuot the Revelation, then Sukkot speaks of the time that has not yet come to pass, the end of days which the prophets spoke of with the certainty of their eventual arrival. Sukkot, agriculturally the time of the final harvest, affirms that history too will emulate the workings of nature. The “first fruits” of the covenant at Sinai will eventually be followed by a time of universal acceptance of God, a time for rejoicing in the fullest sense of the word, a zman simchotenu for all of mankind.

Sukkot is the holiday of universalism par excellence. On this holiday we are commanded in the Torah to offer 70 sacrifices — sacrifices on behalf of all of the nations of the world. The wavings of the four plant species are to be directed to the four corners of the earth. We are to leave the confines of our homes that separate us from others and sit in booths under the heavens that look down upon all of God’s children.