Feast of Tabernacles, Part 1

 Why Are We Doing What We Do? 

I have pitched my tent with a view of the sky, and for one week I will be living in a temporary dwelling place. It does not sound too exciting, and to some it might even sound kind of strange. The question is, "Why would anyone do such a thing?" Why would God command us to sleep in a temporary shelter (Lev. 23:39–43)?

We are coming to the end of the Lord's prophetic calendar that God wants us to keep. And in order for me to relate this to you, I want to play a game with you. Let us call it "Big Deal, Little Deal." Here is the way the game works: We are going to take each of the three main festivals of the Torah—Passover (Pesach), Pentecost (Shavuot), and Tabernacles (Sukkot)—and we are going to ask ourselves: What event does this holiday commemorate, and is the event a "big deal" or a "little deal"?

So let us play our game. We will start with Pesach, Passover. What event does it commemorate? Well, that is easy enough: It celebrates our Exodus from slavery, the night we left Egypt (Ex. 12). Okay—so, what do you say? Would you call that a big deal or a little deal?

So, I do not know about you, but I would say: That is, like, the biggest of deals, right? On a scale of 1–10, Pesach's event is like a ten. There are plagues. Blood, darkness, hail, fire—the Sea splits in this climactic moment of triumph. Death to the bad guys; salvation to the good guys. This is a very big deal. Plus, it is our Independence Day, the very beginning of our nation, Israel.

Okay, what about Shavuot? How big a deal is the event commemorated by Shavuot? On a scale from 1–10, it is like… an 11! Shavuot celebrates the moment an entire nation rendezvoused with God and accepted His—well, marriage proposal (Ex. 19–24). The Almighty literally descended into our world, on the top of a mountain, to give us a document that would define our destiny, that would shape the course of world civilization. Without that event—what would we be? We would be no more than a nomadic tribe in the wilderness. We would be missing a mission. We would be missing a legacy. That is a really big deal.

Alright, so now let us go to Sukkot. So… what does this holiday commemorate?

Well, we sleep in booths—and we do that, the Torah tells us, "that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God" (Lev. 23:43).

Okay, we sleep in booths because we all slept in booths in the desert. So now let us play "Big Deal, Little Deal." On a scale from 1–10, everyone, how big a deal is that booth thing? I am pretty sure that is like a two and a half. I mean, it is all very nice to sleep in booths. Nothing against it, certainly. But do we have to have a whole eight-day holiday commemorating it?

Think for a minute, my friend. Passover—we know what we are celebrating. No one says Passover was really about celebrating God flying the Israelites out of Egypt on magic carpets. The facts of the Exodus are not in dispute. So how could something as basic as what we are celebrating on Sukkot be open to dispute?

So I would like to suggest a theory here: Maybe there is a "big deal" in Sukkot—and it can be apprehended if we find its missing "event." Here is what I mean by that.

If you look at all the other holidays, you find that, generally, they commemorate a particular event, limited in time, that you can actually point to. Pesach commemorates the night we went free; Shavuot commemorates the moment we stood at Sinai and received the Torah and came into marriage covenant with God—but Sukkot, at face value, seems to break the pattern. It appears to commemorate forty years' worth of booth sleeping: day in and day out, booths one night, booths the next. So is it really the case that we have a holiday that does not commemorate an actual event you could point to?

Maybe not. Maybe there is a discrete event with Sukkot too, and if we can find it, we can see what the big deal in the holiday is really all about.

Let us return to that verse in the Torah and see what it tells us. We celebrate Sukkot, the Torah says, so that… your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt (Lev. 23:43).

It sounds like the Torah is talking about a particular point in time, right? God made us sleep in booths "when" He brought us out of Egypt. Not forty years in the desert; seemingly, if we take the words of the verse seriously, it is right when He brought us out that we slept in those booths.

When?

But that sounds crazy. Is this whole booth-commemoration thing really all going back to the very moment of the Exodus—that first night?

To find out, let us go back to the Torah's own description of those first moments of leaving Egypt, back in the Book of Exodus. Is there anything there that involved Sukkot in some way?

And for that answer, we will wait until tomorrow 🥰

Chag Sameach Sukkot!

Shalom,
Alan

www.lightintorah.org