The story behind the day
Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, begins on the fifteenth of Tishri and lasts seven days, in the season of the autumn harvest. The Torah explains it as a memorial of the booths in which God made the Israelites live, and commands rejoicing throughout the week. Jews eat their meals in a sukkah, a temporary shelter roofed with branches, and hold the lulav and etrog, the palm branch and citron with their companion leaves, in prayer. In Israel it keeps one full festival day at the start, and elsewhere two.[1–7]
Origins
Leviticus places the Feast of Booths on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, for seven days, followed by an eighth day of sacred assembly. It commands that Israelites live in booths so that later generations will know God made their ancestors dwell in them, and it names the fruit, palm, leafy boughs and willows to be taken on the first day. The festival is also an old harvest thanksgiving. Nehemiah relates that the returned exiles built booths from branches, which the text says had not been done since the days of Joshua, and Zechariah pictures the nations coming to Jerusalem to keep the feast.[1–2, 8–12]
What it marks
Sukkot joins two things: gratitude for the gathered crop and remembrance of the wilderness years. In ancient times it ranked among the most important feasts and was one of the three festivals for which males went up to the Temple in Jerusalem. The Torah commands rejoicing for the whole seven days, and a Reform source calls it the one festival with an explicit commandment to rejoice.[2–3, 9, 13]
How it came to be
In Temple times the festival was famous for its water-drawing celebration, with flutes and torchlight, of which it was said that whoever had not seen it had never seen real festivity. The Sadducees rejected the rite, finding no support for it in Scripture. After the Temple fell, the sukkah and the lulav remained, and Johanan ben Zakkai ordained that the lulav be taken on all seven days wherever Sukkot is kept, in memory of the Temple.[14–15]
How it is kept
A sukkah must have three walls or more, topped by a roof of natural plant material. Observant Jews eat all their meals in it for the seven days, and some sleep there. On each day except Shabbat the lulav, with myrtle and willow, is held together with an etrog, and a blessing is said. On the seventh day, Hoshana Rabbah, worshippers circle the reading desk seven times, a custom understood as a memorial of the Temple water offering. The eighth day, Shemini Atzeret, is a separate festival.[4–6, 8, 10, 16]
Across traditions
Within Israel, the opening day alone is a full festival, and the days after it are intermediate days; abroad, the second day is a festival too, a legacy of the time when the date of the new moon could not be announced everywhere. Most Conservative congregations outside Israel still keep two days, although the movement's law committee allowed one. Reform Judaism returned to the Bible's single days of observance.[7, 17–18]
Sources
Each statement above was checked against published sources; the verdict says whether it stood as written, was corrected or was hedged.
- VerifiedSefaria, The JPS Tanakh: Gender-Sensitive Edition; Chabad.org, What Is Sukkot?.
- VerifiedSefaria, The JPS Tanakh; Encyclopedia.com; Union for Reform Judaism, Sukkot.
- VerifiedSefaria, The JPS Tanakh; Union for Reform Judaism, Sukkot.
- VerifiedChabad.org, What Is Sukkot?; Encyclopedia.com.
- VerifiedChabad.org, What Is Sukkot?; Union for Reform Judaism, Sukkot.
- VerifiedJewish Encyclopedia, Tabernacles, Feast of; Chabad.org, What Is Sukkot?.
- VerifiedExploringJudaism.org; Encyclopedia.com.
- VerifiedSefaria, The JPS Tanakh; ExploringJudaism.org; Chabad.org, What Is Sukkot?.
- VerifiedJewish Encyclopedia, Tabernacles, Feast of; Chabad.org, What Is Sukkot?; Union for Reform Judaism, Sukkot.
- VerifiedSefaria, The JPS Tanakh: Gender-Sensitive Edition; Encyclopedia.com; Chabad.org, What Is Sukkot?.
- VerifiedSefaria, The JPS Tanakh; Encyclopedia.com.
- VerifiedJewish Encyclopedia, Tabernacles, Feast of; Encyclopedia.com.
- VerifiedJewish Encyclopedia, Tabernacles, Feast of; Encyclopedia.com.
- CorrectedJewish Encyclopedia, Tabernacles, Feast of; Encyclopedia.com.
- VerifiedJewish Encyclopedia, Tabernacles, Feast of; Encyclopedia.com.
- VerifiedChabad.org, What Is Sukkot?; Jewish Encyclopedia, Tabernacles, Feast of.
- VerifiedExploringJudaism.org; Jewish Theological Seminary, Alan Cooper, The Last Day of Passover.
- VerifiedUnion for Reform Judaism, Do Reform Jews celebrate one or two days of Rosh HaShanah?; Central Conference of American Rabbis, Reform Responsa MRR 286-293.