Thread by @wordpaley

Sukkos is my favorite Jewish holiday, and there are a lot of annoying myths about it that go around because the Torah is fairly opaque about what it is, so here’s the first of what will hopefully be a few Sukkos mythbusting threads:

1/14
⛺️🌴🍋☘️🌿

Myth #1: There isn’t actually a good reason to celebrate Sukkos now. According to 14th cent. halakhist R. Yaakov ben Asher, compiler of the code known as the Tur, we really should celebrate at Passover time, but we want to show everyone that we sit outside even when it’s rainy.

Truth #1: THE TORAH LITERALLY CALLS IT THE HARVEST FESTIVAL. In the eastern Mediterranean, harvest season is after the summer. And contra Tur, even the Talmud says the rainy season doesn’t really start until after Sukkos. So yes, there is a good reason why Sukkos is now.

3/14

So why do we live in huts? The Talmud (Sukkah 11b) cites 2 opinions: 1. to remember God’s Clouds of Glory that protected us in the desert or 2. because our ancestor built and lived in actual huts in the desert.

Neither of these explains why we do that now instead of on Passover.

An ostensibly unrelated statement on the next page might, tho. The Talmud says you can roof your sukkah with the unusable plant matter from your threshing floor or wine press.

Why? This a harvest festival! Shouldn’t you be able to decorate your hut with the fruits of your labor?

The technical answer is that produce can contract ritual impurity, and you can’t roof with stuff that can become impure.

But let’s think bigger for a sec. One of the Jews’ biggest issues throughout history is forgetting
G!d and doing bad stuff because of their material success.

Moshe warns about this throughout Devarim (5th book of Torah), and it ACTUALLY HAPPENS over and over again throughout the Prophets. For starters: Deut. 8:12, 11:15-16, 32:15; Judges 17:11; 21:15; Isaiah 28:1-4, 65:11; Jeremiah 2:7; Hosea 8:13-14; Habakkuk 2:5.

7/14

What’s the time of year this is most likely to happen? Probably when you’re harvesting crops you spent all spring and summer working on, no? So it’s a humbling reminder to sit in your hut and look up at all the stuff that didn’t go right (Talmud uses the word פסולת, lit. refuse).

But at the same time, those withered wheat stalks and blighted grapevines protect you from the elements. And they too only grew with G!d’s help. So G!d’s protection and closeness, which the sukkah represents, is manifesting through what you thought was all bad and useless!

9/14

It’s a perfect message for after Yom Kippur, when we try to scrub every speck of dirt off our souls and condition our self-acceptance on unattainable aspirations and the fulfillment of our potential. We need Sukkos to remind us that G!d loves us, dirt, failed crops, and all.

BUT, IMPORTANTLY: When Jews lived in agricultural societies, they understood that G!d communicated with them largely through the Earth: rain timing, soil quality, infestations etc.—all year round. So Sukkos was time to celebrate and reflect on this Earth-grounded relationship.

There are other ways in which G!d speaks to us today. But since we’re not farmers anymore, we don’t—can’t (yet)—see Sukkos in the same way. What we can do, though, is to use the opportunities interacting with plants and the outdoors to explore what we once had with G!d.

12/14

The commercialization and sterilization of Sukkos mitzvah items (flat, mass-produced bamboo mats from China, factory-farmed esrogim) and absence of nature from Sukkos discourse (has anyone ever mentioned water at a Simchas Beis Hashoeva you were at?) makes this pretty difficult.

But not impossible. So tomorrow, consider how your esrog started out from a tiny seed. Imagine being a dog-tired farmer looking up at a roof of dried stalks that YOU GREW WITH G!D. Dream of actually NEEDING rain to live. You may be surprised about what you were missing.

חג שמח!