What’s Your Favorite Holiday?

Shabbat Sukkot 5782, Rabbi Sam Cohon

Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, Arizona

Shabbat Shalom, Chag Sukkot Sameiach and Mo’adim L’Simcha!  They say that life imitiates art, but I think sometimes life imitates humor.  My favorite story about building a sukkah, the temporary tabernacle we put up in our backyards as a reminder of the booths our ancestors built at the harvest time, and as a further reminder of the 40 years of wandering they did in the Wilderness of Sinai between leaving Egyptian slavery and arriving in the Promised Land, is a true story.   

This Sukkos story involves my grandfather on my mom's side, my Zaidie Lou, who was famous for never throwing anything out, ever.  When he and my Bubbie Dora moved out to California in 1948 or so he took along a multitude of glass jars filled with screws, bolts, nuts, and washers.  And he took the chains you need to attach storm windows for the winter--not realizing that storm windows are not exactly a staple of life in Los Angeles.  

Anyway, one year my Zaidie Lou and my dad were putting up the Sukkah in the backyard.  Neither one was exactly a precise builder, but they both worked with great enthusiasm.  They had the Sukkah pretty much built out of old plywood, scraps of two by fours and leftover wooden crates.  It wasn't much to see, but they were very proud of it and were stepping back to admire it, when they noticed that it was not just a Tabernacle, but a lean-to, and it was leaning alright, way over to the left.  My Zaidie Lou and my dad stood back, sweating, and looked at the sloping Sukkah. 

"Well, if we had some way to pull it back to the right, maybe it would be OK for Sukkos," my dad suggested. "We could throw something over the apricot tree and pull it straight."

And my Zaidie Lou said, "I've got just the thing in the garage."  So he went in and rummaged around in a garage full of those glass jars of screws, bolts, and washers imported from East Coast; and he found just what he needed--the chains from the New Jersey storm windows that had traveled three thousand miles to California. 

So my Zaidie Lou and my dad slung the big chains over a branch of the apricot tree, and then attached it to the right side of the Sukkah; and then my dad pulled on it, and the Sukkah indeed lurched over to the right--just a little too far to be called straight. 

"Oy," Zaide Lou said. "Maybe if we throw the other chain over the left side from the Sukkah, we could straighten it out that way."   And so the second storm window chain went over the apricot tree, and around the left side of the Sukkah; and my Zaide Lou pulled on that chain, and the Sukkah pulled back left--again, a little too far to be centered.  So my dad pulled on his window chain, and the makeshift Sukkah moved right, and then my Zaide Lou pulled on his window chain and the Sukkah moved left, and so on as they tried to even out their great Tabernacle.  Back and forth, back and forth went the Sukkah seesaw...

Meanwhile, my mom's mother, Bubbie Dora, had come outside to watch the proceedings.  She stood quietly, wiping her hands on her apron, viewing the spectacle.  Finally she spoke, in Yiddish--"Sholom Aleichem is geshtorben far der tzeit"--the great Yiddish humorist Sholom Aleichem died too young—he should only have lived to see this! 

You know, usually people associate the Jewish calendar month of Tishrei with the fall holidays, but in truth this period started well before that, in the last weeks of the month of Elul.  Just to recap the experience of this time of extraordinary activity in our young synagogue, the season commenced with Selichot eight days before Rosh HaShanah, about a month ago, and has run through Rosh Hashanah, Tashlich, Yom Kippur, and now Sukkot to get us here. It is a time in which Jewish events and rituals follow each other with startling speed and in very close proximity. 

I remember when I was working my way through UCLA serving as a very part-time cantor on weekends and holidays.  My fraternity, AEPi, like all fraternities at UCLA then, had meetings every Monday night.  One fall the schedule was much like ours this year, and in the way the holidays occurred I ended up missing the Monday meetings because I was conducting festival services each Monday for about a month.  The guys in the fraternity gave me a very hard time and claimed I was inventing new holidays each week just so I could miss meetings…  what was the name of that holiday again, Cohon?  Shemini Atzeret?  Do they have medication for that? 

Well, look, any excuse to miss a meeting is a good thing, of course, but it was all legitimate.  They are all real Jewish holidays, honest.

Now each of these holidays has its high points.  In fact, every Jewish holy day has its fine features, and each has its supporters. 

But the one thing I am sure of is that there is not one single Jew for whom Shemini Atzeret is his or her favorite Jewish holiday.  Simchat Torah, maybe; but not Shemini Atzeret.

So, what’s your favorite Jewish holiday?  For many people it’s Passover, in spite of having to eat matzah—lots of friends and family, rituals and traditions and food and freedom.  Many of us love Chanukah, especially children, with its great music and candles and magical quality of the miraculous.  Some like Purim best; lots of folks mention Simchas Torah with its celebrations; others prefer Shabbat, for its regularity and rest.  Many Jews will mention Rosh HaShanah, with the drama of the shofar; some even like Yom Kippur, best, believe it or not, with the gorgeous Kol Nidrei melody and the sense of deep holiness and personal growth.  Shavuot gets a little bit of play from fans of cheesecake—the food, that is.  And once in a while you find a person who, like me and Sophie, thinks that Sukkot is the loveliest, most pleasant of Jewish festivals. 

But never have I heard anyone say, “You know, the best Jewish holiday is Shemini Atzeret; I just couldn’t live with myself if I missed that one.  The prayer for rain really gets me every time…”

And you know, that’s kind of a shame.  Because Shemini Atzeret combines the themes that all the other fall holidays highlight, and it does so in a way that can connect us with the messages of each of those festivals meaningfully.   And as close as it falls to the conclusion of the fall festival endurance contest, Shemini Atzeret serves to carry the meanings of this great season into the eleven months still to come.

Shemini Atzeret, the 8th day of assembly, in a ritual sense is nearly as holy as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and it includes Yizkor, the prayers of memorial and remembrance that Yom Kippur incorporates; it is part of the great Thanksgiving festival of Sukkot, and so connects us with the natural world and the great concept of gratitude that is at the heart of religious living; and it has some of the joy of the festival of Simchat Torah, the celebrations that carry with them the simchah shel mitzvah into the non-holiday world that will follow for the next eight weeks of the Jewish year.

In a way, Shemini Atzeret is the most covenantal of all the fall festivals.  At its heart is a ritual that is both agricultural and liturgical: the prayer for rain, Geshem. Sung in a unique melody, the prayer for rain enunciates the depth and beauty of the brit, the covenantal partnership we share with God for the maintenance and stewardship of the natural world.

So, after praising Shemini Atzeret, which we will celebrate on Tuesday morning at services, I have to add one more festival note about this time of year.  In the time when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, an additional holiday was celebrated during Sukkot.  It was called Simcha beit haSho’eivah, the water drawing celebration, and it included some remarkable rituals of its own.  Each morning of Sukkot, the priests went to the pool of Shiloach (Silwan) just outside the western side of the city of Jerusalem to fill a golden flask. Shofar blasts greeted their arrival at the Temple’s Water Gate. They then ascended and poured the water so that it flowed over the altar in the Temple simultaneously with wine being poured from another bowl.  The Talmud recorded that “one who had never witnessed the Rejoicing at the Place of the Water Drawing had never seen true joy in his life.”

It describes the festivities in detail, from the lighting of immense menorah set in the Temple courtyard (each section of it held gallons of oil and was fit with wicks made from priests’ worn‑out vestments), which generated such intense light that they illuminated every courtyard in the city. A Levite orchestra of flutes, trumpets, harps, and cymbals accompanied torchlight processions, and men who had earned the capacity for real spiritual joy through their purity, character and scholarship danced ecstatically to the hand‑clapping, foot-stomping, and hymn‑singing crowds.

We do not imagine our distinguished sages as acrobats and tumblers, but they were often agile physically as well as mentally: Rabbi Simon ben Gamaliel juggled eight lighted torches and raised himself into a handstand on two fingers, a gymnastic feat no one else could master. Others juggled eight knives, eight glasses of wine, or eight eggs before leaders and dignitaries.

At dawn, as the rejoicing subsided, the priests enacted what some have identified as the transformation of another folk rite, one to rekindle a diminishing sun approaching the autumnal equinox. With trumpet blasts, the Kohanim (priests) descended the steps to the Women’s Court, marched to the Eastern Gate, turned their faces west to the Temple, and proclaimed, “Our fathers who were in this place stood with their backs to the Temple and their faces eastward and worshipped the sun, but our eyes are unto the Lord.”

It must have really been something.  In a way, our Simchat Torah celebrations replace what was the most joyous day of our ancestor’s year.

In Biblical times, both the First and Second Temples were dedicated on Sukkot, at this exact time of year.  It was a time of great dedication to religious inspiration, thanksgiving, joy and gratitude.  Similarly, we have this one final festival period in which we can renew our commitment to live in sacred, covenantal partnership with God. 

If we can do that, the fine potential of this early year holiday season will be realized in a year of goodness and blessing and holiness and joy.  All sukkahs, all Sukkot, must eventually come down, and not all great beginnings lead to ultimate success.  But we do know with certainty that if we can maintain and continually renew our focus on the sacred, we may earn the merit of our own good beginning to this 5782 year—and may it be a much, much better year, filled with health, and success, and many reasons for thanksgiving for all of us.

Shabbat Shalom—and Moadim l’simcha, chagim uzmanim l’sason.

Chag Sameiach!