Sukkah – The Hut

  • Sukkah – “The Hut” – Founding the Jewish Nation
    • Welcome to a new tractate in the Book of Festivals. Most of us think of Sukkot as sort of harvest festival, celebrating the end of the agricultural cycle, where for a few days we eat and sleep in a sukkah, an outdoor shelter. But the festival is more than that, as the end of the harvest, in those ancient days, was also the end of the year, and Sukkot is the holiday that brings the calendar year to a close. It commemorates the years of the Exodus and establishing a Jewish homeland and agrarian society. And, in its design are ceremonies that were created to replace the ancient sacrifices on the altars of the Temple.
    • 7/9/21, Chapter 1, Page 2 – A sukkah is a temporary three sided, roofed shelter of individual, family, or community size. During the week of the Sukkot festival, observant Jews move into them and it becomes the place where they eat, study, and sleep. It’s intended to be reminiscent of the shelters created at the end of the Exodus march through the desert. So it’s not surprising that this tractate launches right into the building codes – we’ve seen that in past tractates. Most of the page focuses on the maximum height of the roof, 20 cubits, 30 feet, because it needs to be low enough that people notice it and don’t forget that they have arrived at a place of shelter.
    • 7/10/21, Page 3 – Off on a tangent after starting out with an argument over the minimum size of a sukkah (4×4 cubits, or 6×6 feet, “sufficient for a man to enter with his body, head, and a table”), the rabbis are headed off discussing distances and placement of homes and courtyards. What caught my attention was a digression that mentioned “leprosy of the house”. It turns out there are three types of leprosy mentioned in the Torah; of the body, of clothing, and of houses. Specifically, it seems, it was some sort of greenish or reddish growth on stones in houses (so not dry rot nor black mold, and not in outbuildings like barns, only homes). Sounds almost like some sort of lichen. In other parts of the Talmud, I gather, we’ll discover the detailed methods of purifying a stone home subjected to leprosy.
    • 7/11/21, Page 4 – We return to the classist bent of some of these Talmudic scholars, as a discussion ensues over the suitability and desirability of living for a week in the sukkah, and some of them just can’t imagine being comfortable living in substandard housing for seven days. Dirt? Straw? Palm fronds? Where are the cedar deck, the cushions, the drapes? Really, the horror of it all. You mean there are, like, actually people who live in homes that aren’t fit for the cover photo of Babylonian Digest? These guys basically invented glamping.
    • 7/12/21, Page 5 – Having dispensed, for the moment, with the maximum height of a sukkah, we turn to the minimum, 10 handbreadths, or about 2.5 feet (that’s a minimum to be considered “a domain”, but function overriding the rule, it also has to be big enough to fit your head, body, and a table inside, so it’ll have to be more than that). On today’s page the rabbis argue over where that number comes from – is it a comparison to the Ark of the Covenant? Perhaps a part of the Temple? Maybe the height of a cherub? Much of the argument is over differences of a single handbreadth, around 4″. Two things occur to me, the first, that perhaps the measure of the sukkah might simply stand on its own, not derived from another structure, something they appear not to consider. The second, if I find myself actually sitting face to face with God, I don’t think a 4″ difference in the gap between us is going to matter, to me or to God.
    • 7/13/21, Page 6 – Today we start to tackle the shape of the sukkah. There is, as in so many things in the Talmud, disagreement. The key point comes down to how many “full-fledged” walls it must have. We generally think of it as a four sided hut or tent, with one side open, but that’s not actually a rule. The disagreement is whether there need to be two or three full-fledged walls, and whether there is then a third, or fourth, wall that can be a simple connecting wall as narrow as “one handbreadth” in width. There still has to then be a fourth, or fifth, side that is open. The majority opt for a total of three walls, which is probably why we’ve come to make our sukkahs in an open rectangular shape, though what’s actually specified is an open trapezoid with one wall that can be as narrow as about four inches.
    • 7/14/21, Page 7 – While the official minimum height of a sukkah is only about 2.5 feet (10 handbreadths), even pod hotel compartments are taller than that and for functionality, the rabbis are clear that it has to be big enough for a man’s head, body, and a table to fit inside. Its supposed to be a temporary structure, but not too temporary, it has to be sturdy enough to be considered a home for a week. It has to afixed to the ground, or does it? Can it be on water or mounted on wheels, for example? Does your yacht or RV count? What about a round structure? The rabbis decide if it’s a big round structure, sufficient for 24 people to sit in, then it’s okay. Why does making it bigger negate the requirement for three walls with corners?
    • 7/15/21, Page 8 – I should have guessed, yesterday, that if I were going to ask an obvious question, it would likely be answered on an upcoming page. To whit, I asked, why is a round sukkah acceptable after all the desciption of the open sided trapezoid, and why does it have to be big enough for 24 people? At the least, the sages tackle the first part, by asserting that as long as the circle is big enough to contain a proper sized square, it can be a sukkah, i.e., the square’s diagonal is equal to the circle’s circumference. They don’t, as yet, address why that wouldn’t apply to a smaller circle. And I guess the corners and walls are left to the theoretical.
    • 7/16/21, Page 9 – Can you reuse an old sukkah? Once again, it’s about intent. You can’t just use any old hut, it has to be a sukkah that was built for and only used for the holiday in previous years, and it needs a new roof. The roof is all important, which makes sense, given that back in the time of discussion the roof of the sukkah was made of palm fronds, that needed replacing (and some people still cover the roof with those if they can find them). Also, the roof must be the primary source of shade from the sun, so no building your sukkah under a tree, where the tree would provide more cover than the roof.
    • 7/17/21, Page 10 – One would not think that a canopy bed, or mosquito netting over the bed, would be problematic in a sukkah, especially the latter. After all, you’re sleeping outside, a little protection from the elements doesn’t seem a bad thing. But… the typical bed has four corners, and if it’s got four bedposts, and you hang netting or a sheet over those four posts… suddenly, you’ve got a second sukkah within a larger one. But, it’s a roof under another roof, so it’s not the roof providing shade (see, we’re tying in the whole, don’t build under a tree argument), and isn’t a valid sukkah and is therefore unfit for sleeping in. Unless?! Unless you sleep naked, in which case the netting or sheet draped over the bed can be considered your sleeping garments and all is well in the world. These guys.
    • 7/18/21, Page 11 – One of the things that seems odd to me is that a sukkah has to be roofed with bundles of branches, and not make use of natural materials in situ. No making use of a growing tree as a canopy, or trellised vines entwined overhead. It feels like a growing thing ought to have more connection to spirit, nature, the divine, than something cut and bundled. Two reasons are given, one is that something which is rooted in the ground is subject to ritual impurity, that nebulous concept that keeps rearing its head in the Talmud. The other is that repurposing something that is simply present is a cheat, it lacks intention and preparation. Man’s dominion over nature. Show those plants who’s the boss!
    • 7/19/21, Page 12 – Continuing with the suitability or unsuitability of various materials for the roofing of the sukkah, today foucses on specific types of branches, vines, and leaves, and either accepts or dismisses each depending on either its susceptibility to ritual impurity or any appearance of such susceptibility. For example, in the latter, bundles of straw are not permitted because they are so common for other uses, that your neighbors might think you’ve simple repurposed bundles of straw you had laying around, rather than intentionally collecting straw specifically for sukkah. We can’t have the neighbors gossiping about you, can we? Wild licorice plant leaves are quite acceptable, and smell nice too.
    • 7/20/21, Page 13 – On Page 11 we learned that the sages felt that mankind needed to show domination over nature by cutting branches, reeds, etc., away from the earth in order to make them “fit” for use as roofing material. The various branches then need to be bound together. But what about those sorts of reeds and branches which are naturally bound together at one end, like, the example given, palm fronds. No, not good enough, they must be separated and then bound together by the hand of man. And why? Because, and I quote, “bindings at the hand of Heaven are unfit”. These two passages seem really off the rails to me, for a people who so ardently believed in the power of a deity, declaring that the work of said deity is insufficient and needs to be corrected by humans.
    • 7/21/21, Page 14 – I’m just going to quote, because this is one of the most profound (and in some ways least faith-based) statements I’ve seen in this whole Talmud study so far: “Action negates status created by action and status created by thought; however, thought negates neither status created by action nor status created by thought.”
    • 7/22/21, Page 15 – Can you use an existing roof, for your sukkah. Now, the previous pages would have us assume not, after all, part of the building of the sukkah is the intention and direct action of building it. But, the sages opine, it could work – you could convert your home or another structure to a sukkah as long as you put in the work, for example, tearing out every other board or beam of the roof, or tearing them up and moving them, just something sufficient to show that you’re recreating the structure in a new way. To me this seems at odds with their past admonitions against “repurposing” materials, but what do I know? They do make a point of letting us know that hollowing out a haystack doesn’t qualify – it may be a lot of work, but the “roof” doesn’t change.
    • 7/23/21, Page 16 – Office cubicles and bathroom stall partitions. That’s what come to mind as today’s page establishes that in order for a partition to be considered a wall, it has to meet standards. If it starts at the ground, it has to be 10 handbreadths, about 32″ high before it’s considered a wall. If it hangs from the roof, it has to come down to within 3 handbreadths, just under 10″, of the ground in order to be a wall. Mind the gap!
    • 7/24/21, Page 17 – Stepping outside of my usual comments, as the rabbis debate minutae about sukkahs. Why? To make a point about the Talmud, which, again, is a transcript of rabbinic commentary a millenium after the Torah was written. The only details of living in a sukkah in the Torah appear in Leviticus 23:42-43 (the whole holiday only merits eleven lines). It states: “You shall live in booths seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I the LORD your God.” That’s it. A century later, Nehemiah, the prophet, detailed in verse 8 of his book, adds telling people to go gather olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy branches to build their sukkahs. That’s it. All the rest of it? Made up by custom, happenstance, evolution, random rabbinical decisions, and then codified a thousand years later by a group of rabbinic sages arguing handbreadths and ritual impurities.
    • 7/25/21, Page 18 – We’ve been told that a sukkah needs to have a roof, but also that it needs to be constructed in such a way as to allow gaps to see the heavens above. But not too much of a gap, mind you. So what to do when the construction of the roof is not so exact, and has larger breaches than it should? Rabbi Yehuda bar Ilai, or Rabbi Judah, a 2nd century sage, one of the most quoted in the Talmud, compares it to catching a freshwater bream in a net and deciding whether it’s kosher or not. On its own, it is, but if it’s caught in waters that abound with non-kosher fish, perhaps it will be misidentified. If it’s caught in waters that are dominated by kosher fish, the risk is small. So, too, with breaches in the roof. Is there a risk that the holes in the roof will be misinterpreted as incomplete work, or will it be obvious that it’s simply the way it was built.
    • 7/26/21, Page 19 – One of the requirements for the roofing of the sukkah is that the majority of the sukkah should be in shade, which is in perfect keeping with the various restrictions on gaps in the roofing that have been discussed before. But, someone asks, what if the sukkah is divided into more than one room, and one of those rooms has more sunlight than shade? Does that invalidate the use of that room, or of the whole sukkah? No, is the slightly sneering response, the rule states more shade than sunlight for the whole sukkah, not because you picked out a part of it under a skylight, pointed at it, and said, “look, more sunlight than shade”. Sounds like modern day arguments on climate change.
    • 7/27/21, Page 20 – Apparently it was not uncommon for a slave, servant, or student of a sage to sleep under their master’s bed, presumably to be available to them at a moment’s notice, for whatever purposes they might be needed or wanted. This, however, does not sit well with the rabbis in discussions of the week spent in the sukkah. Not for reasons of some sort of impropriety, but because it’s unlikely that the space under the bed will be at least 10 handbreadths above the sleeping person, and also blocks their view of the stars through the roof, and therefore, they won’t have fulfilled the mitzvah of sleeping in proper sukkah configuration.
    • 7/28/21, Chapter 2, Page 21 – In the previous tractate, Yoma, we learned a little about “The Water of Lustration”, a holy, purifying water made from the ashes of an unblemished red heifer, water, and at least a homeopathic amount of the previous batches of the water, stretching back to antiquity. I’m not sure where we’re going with this, but the water is back, as we learn about how the red heifers are raised in a special compound near The Temple, attended to by children who are born and raised in this courtyard, bringing the heifer water from the Pool of Siloam, a holy spring (which shows up again later in Christianity as the pool of healing water used to wash Jesus’ wounds), riding about on oxen, and staying as pure as can be, until they become adults and leave the compound to join society. That’s going to go well.
    • 7/29/21, Page 22 – The science of shadows is on deck today, as the sages debate whether a sukkah with roofing that is exactly 50% coverage is fit or unfit. After all, the requirement is that there be more shade than sunlight. In the end, it’s easy they conclude, because while directly at the point of the rooftop things may be 50:50, by the time the rays of the sun reach the ground level, because of the way shadows are cast, there will be more shadow than sunlight. Therefore, a rooftop with 50% coverage is just fine!
    • 7/30/21, Page 23 – The maybes of sukkah placement. On a ship? Perhaps, but since a sukkah must be able to withstand “typical winds” for its location, and ships tend to sail into heavier winds than are found on land, it must be sturdier than normal. In a tree? We know it can’t be below the tree because of blocking the view of the heavens, but at the top? The problem is, climbing trees on the first day of the holiday, as well as on Sabbath, is not permitted, so you gotta get up there, and stay there, throughout those days. On or against an animal, like a camel or elephant? The concern here is if the animal were to happen to die during the week long holiday, leaving you with a dead floor or wall, which of course is impure! Oh the considerations….
    • 7/31/21, Page 24 – We’re not quite done with elephants and camels as walls of the sukkah. There is a concern that the animal might die during the Sukkot week. Or move, it’s a week, it’s a live animal, what if it moves? But some of the rabbis pooh-pooh this idea as not very likely, you know, death happens, but what are the chances? Well, it’s pointed out, remember back to Yoma where we get the high priest a second wife for the week, just in case, you know, the first one dies? Nah, that’s like worrying about whether a wineskin will suddenly burst and spill its contents on the ground, one counters. Just to tangent off, it’s thrown back that we wouldn’t write a divorce decree on a live animal, we’d wait for it to be dead to use its skin as parchment. Right back at you comes the reply, who says we can’t write a divorce decree on a live animal? The wineskin might not have burst, but these guys have clearly been dipping into it.
    • 8/1/21, Page 25 – No multitasking of mitzvahs. That’s it. To unpack it a little bit, a mitzvah is doing something that you are obligated to do by religious commandments – following the rules of the Torah. If you are in the midst of intentionally doing one of those, and you encounter a situation where you might otherwise have to do another, you’re not obligated to do both at once. In the context of Sukkot, for example, you (and your guests) are not required to spend the day(s) of celebrating your wedding in a sukkah, you hold the wedding feast, and spend the wedding night, in your own home. If you’re taking care of someone who is ill, you spend the time with them, not sitting in a hut on your rooftop.
    • 8/2/21, Page 26 – Further discussion on the exemption for living in a sukkah for the week for travelers, watchmen, and health care workers, and then we move on. We know that all eating and sleeping is supposed to take place in the sukkah during the week… but what if you’re feeling just a little bit peckish and aren’t nearby, or perhaps a touch drowsy? Indeed, we are granted exemptions for snacking and napping, which can be done outside of the sukkah, as long as they aren’t, respectively, “substantial” or “prolonged”.
    • 8/3/21, Page 27 – There’s something, in a way, gratifying about seeing hard and fast rules break down quickly in response to pointed questions. We start from a ruling that one must eat fourteen meals in their own sukkah, basically lunch and dinner each day for a week, and only in their own sukkah. It’s kind of amazing how quickly it falls apart in response to questions about someone who doesn’t eat two full meals a day, someone who has to travel between cities and/or two homes, and the biggie, sharing a communal meal with friends and family, in each other’s sukkahs. Given that the original ruling was based on “eating in the sukkah just like it is your home”, I wonder how it would fare in modern day’s culture of restaurants and cafeterias, where many people rarely eat both lunch and dinner at home each day.
    • 8/4/21, Page 28 – I like the little sidebars in the Talmud when we are introduced to one or another of the sages. Today there’s a brief focus on Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, or Ribaz (acronym), who established one of the earliest academies of learning in the era of the Second Temple. He was noted for not just his attention to the classic texts of scripture, but for also delving into the worlds of mathematics, astronomy, demonology, angelology, numerology, scribal notes, talking palm trees, folk tales, and even “parables of foxes”, which are either about foxes or involving talking foxes. No stone left unturned in his pursuit of knowledge. He also, in a feminist leap forward, abolished the practice of “testing” a wife’s faithfulness, based solely on the jealous suspicions of her husband. And, secretly negotiated a peace treaty with Vespasian, the Roman general who was to become emperor.
    • 8/5/21, Page 29 – If it rains, or there’s heavy wind, it’s okay to move from the sukkah into your home to eat. Rav Yosef announces that with his “delicate constitution”, eating in the rain is like having a servant start to pour him a glass of water and instead throw the jug of water in his face. The others respond with a litany of “it’s likes” that involve God sending solar and lunar eclipses as punishment for evils that include chopping down fruit trees, not paying IOUs, late payment of wages, falsifying testimony, forgery, charging interest, arrogance, throwing your friends under the bus, homosexuality, and not intervening in a rape. Hyperbolic sarcasm?
    • 8/6/21, Chapter 3, Page 30 – Where did the materials that you’re using to build your sukkah, to celebrate the holiday, come from? Even if no one else can see it, your performance of the mitzvah of the festival is tainted by your own knowledge or suspicion of whatever despair or damage was caused by obtaining your materials in a sketchy manner. Cutting corners means not giving 100%, and like the multitasking question a few pages ago (page 25), performing mitzvahs requires full commitment.
    • 8/7/21, Page 31 – It’s good to know that, most of the time, the sages come down on the side of that not only does building your sukkah out of “fell of the truck” materials render it unfit, but that if you steal a sukkah, that’s a no-no too. Yes, apparently this was an issue, ranging from someone who forces another person out of their own sukkah and then sits in it and eats in order to fulfill the holiday mitzvah, to the physical theft of the entire sukkah, in an illustrative case where the Exilarch, the political leader of the Jewish community, has his minions steal a local family’s sukkah in order to use it himself. He, like politicians everywhere, gets a pass, as Rav Nahman defends the theft to the council by claiming that the woman complainant is “just a screamer”. Does that sound eerily familiar to some modern day situations? Oh, and of course, Nahman is the Exilarch’s cousin.
    • 8/8/21, Page 32 – One of the rituals of the Sukkot festival involves waving a lulav, a date palm branch. Now, I understand wanting to have everything be “just so”, but the litany of things that these sages find unacceptable in the choice of a palm branch – no splits, no asymmetry, no blemishes, no twists, no bends, no crookedness, no thorns, and it has to be not too long, not too short, not too wide, not too narrow – is just ridiculous. It’s a tree branch, and nature creates all sorts of tree branches, and they’re all beautiful in their own way. Besides, God didn’t even tell you to wave a lulav around, let alone a “perfect” one, that’s a ritual you guys completely made up – (s)he just said “rejoice”.
    • 8/9/21, Page 33 – There are four plants involved in the ritual waving mentioned yesterday. Two are specific – date palm and willow branches. Two are left open to interpretation – a dense leaved branch and the fruit of a beautiful tree. At some point in history it became custom, later codified into a rule, that those were a myrtle branch and a citron. At some point it also became custom to bind the branches together to make them more beautiful. There’s disagreement about the citron, some hold it in the same hand as the branches, others in the opposite. As noted yesterday, the whole waving thing, as well as the binding thing, were made up later in order to pretty up what probably started out as a simple table display.
    • 8/10/21, Page 34 – Having dispensed, two days ago, with the palm branch, and prior to that, though I didn’t mention it, the myrtle branch, and the need to seek out perfection, today the sages apparently feel the need to go through the entire same process with the willow branch and the citron. Almost literally, word for word, repeating all the things that would disqualify them from being “fit”. With the exception of noting where the particular types of plants are to be found, and the serration of the willow leaves, I don’t think there was any difference in the litany. As to the citron, obviously not a branch, they still cover all the various hallmarks of a beautiful citrus fruit. The citron itself is a custom, not a requirement, and there has been on and off talk about using other citruses, even other fruits, over the course of this tractate. We do find out that really small fruits are not acceptable, so no kumquats. I wonder what the rabbis would make of a buddha hand lemon?
    • 8/11/21, Page 35 – Why an etrog, a citron, for the fourth item? It’s not specified in the Torah, which simply says, “the fruit of a beautiful tree”. It’s not native to the Middle East, having arrived from China sometime between 100-500 BCE. There’s lots of back and forth, much of it related to the simple beauty of the fruit itself, as well as that both it and the bark of its tree both have the same scent/flavor. They briefly considered peppercorns, but those come from a vine, not a tree, and they’re too small. There’s no real consideration of other fruits, and it seems they’re just rubber-stamping a near millennium long custom at that point. But I do wonder, and it isn’t addressed, what they used for the ritual prior to the introduction of the citron?
    • 8/12/21, Page 36 – Yesterday’s page had a reference to the unfitness of an etrog that was “black like a Cushite”, which, in today’s modern woke clime, invoked numerous screeds on the internet about racism. It becomes clear continuing on to today’s page that the sages weren’t even referring to the Cushite people, but “black like a Cushite etrog”, another variety, and in like form, they declare the unfitness of white citrons, green citrons, speckled citrons, split, blemished, pierced, pickled, boiled, rotten, and other citrons, making it clear that one should seek out a beautiful, firm, well-formed, bright yellow etrog. No doubt someone will make that sound racist too, given that etrogs are of Chinese origin.
    • 8/13/21, Page 37 – Shake, shake, shake your lulav. As I’ve mentioned, there’s minimal instruction in the few passages about the Sukkot holiday as to what rituals are to be performed. So where does the custom of raising and shaking the bound group of three branches and a citron in six directions come from? The closest the we get is in the selection criteria for the branches, stating that they should be long enough to shake. From there, ancient customs developed based on, hey, if they have to be long enough to shake, obviously we’re meant to shake them. Folk custom became ritual became rule in the time of the Talmudic rabbis, who, while coming up with varied explications, mostly just go with, everybody already does it, let’s make it a rule.
    • 8/14/21, Page 38 – Presaging the advent of audiobooks by nearly two millennia, the debate today is whether or not one achieves one’s study and/or prayer requirements just from hearing someone else read them out loud, versus reading them oneself. In typical myopic form, the rabbis dismiss that one can if the person reading it out loud is a slave, woman, or child. But they do pimp for what we might call active listening, to a teacher, a leader, or a sage, who not only reads, but adds to the experience in the way they interpret the reading. At the same time, they’re quite clear that it requires a level of engagement beyond just letting words drone past.
    • 8/15/21, Page 39 – There’s a Jewish tradition that farming include a sabbatical year, a shmita, i.e., every seven years, in rotation, each field is left unplanted, untended, and unharvested, allowing the soil to regenerate, and the poor of your community eat from it for free. Obviously for crops like fruit trees, they still exist, but you’re not supposed to harvest the fruit. So the rabbinical explanation here for obtaining an etrog, a citron, on sabbatical years by including it as “a gift” from your lulav supplier, makes no sense. First, there must be other suppliers. Second, why would the fruit tree grower necessarily also be the one who grows the other three trees for the lulav branches. And third, in order to have etrogs available, the farmer would have to tend and harvest the trees. Color me confused.
    • 8/16/21, Page 40 – Apparently the sabbatical year of allowing your land to remain fallow is more complicated than I’d learned… surprise. I’m still a tad confused, as I understand you’re supposed to let the poor of your community, and the animals of the wild, consume as much of the “spontaneously produced” fruits and vegetables as they want. But apparently you’re allowed not only to harvest some of what remains for your own use (which makes practical sense), but to sell or give some of it away (resulting in yesterday’s method of getting etrogs from a grower during the shmita year), but only if the funds you receive are used to buy other food for your own table. A transference of consecrated status from one food to another via the intermediary of cash. What’s not explained, so far anyway, is how one determines how much of that spontaneous crop is yours for the picking.
    • 8/17/21, Page 41 – Yesterday we saw that one could sell some of the sabbatical year prohibited harvest produce as long as the money received was used for the purchase of food for your own table. In what has to be the biggest wink, wink of the Talmud so far, the rabbis posit that it’s perfectly acceptable to walk into any shop, of any kind, hand the shopkeeper a coin, who in turn will hand you something edible, thus completing your food purchase. You then hand the comestible back to them as a gift, and they hand your coin back to you as a gift, and now the coin is unconsecrated and you can use it for whatever you want, in their shop or elsewhere. The Talmudic rabbis didn’t invent money laundering, but they did codify it into law.
    • 8/18/21, Page 42 – One thing that I get asked about by non-Jews is the “today I am a man” concept of a Jewish boy’s Bar Mitzvah at age 13 (and in modern day, “woman” and a Bat Mitzvah). It’s usually asked in a joking way, like, does that mean, you’re expected to go out, get a job, raise a family, etc.? Short answer, no. It’s a ritual recognition that around that age, a boy has enough understanding to take on the ritual practices of an adult. While it’s celebrated at a specific birthday, today’s passage recognizes that each child develops differently, and that in practice, each child should be taught, and take on “grown-up” responsibilities and practices at the point when it can be seen that they are ready to do so. Not before, not after, and, as needed, with adult supervision.
    • 8/19/21, Chapter 4, Page 43 – The Boethusians are back. I know you’ve been holding your breath waiting, ever since we met them in Eruvin 68. And what are they up to today? Hiding willow branches, that’s what. Because the main folk at The Temple, the Pharisees, have decided, on thin evidence in the Torah, that if the last day of Sukkot falls on the Sabbath, they still proceed with the ritual procession of carrying willow branches around the altar seven times to close out the holiday. The Boethusians aren’t having it. No carrying on the Sabbath, and especially not for a ritual that’s, as far as they’re concerned, made up by the Temple priests. So this one year, they snuck in and hid the branches under some stones so they couldn’t be used the next day on the Sabbath. It didn’t work, as a group of ignorant worshipers (variously defined in different sources as ignoramuses, idiots, or people of the land, but the implication is clear) stumbled upon the branches, pulled them out, and gave them to the priests, who in a compromise, stood the branches up in a circle around the altar and then just marched around seven times, not carrying them.
    • 8/20/21, Page 44 – Over the last few years we’ve truly seen the evidence that when challenged on facts, people will often dig their heels in, touting their belief that something is true is more important than anything else. This isn’t new behavior for human beings, it’s just more evident with the prevalence of social media. In today’s passage, Rabbi Yohanan argues that the four rituals of the lulav (the bound branches), the willow branch march from yesterday, the “ten saplings”, and the “water libation” (no idea on either of those), were direct orders from God through Moses at Mt. Sinai. The Babylonian sages argue that they have records that their own predecessors codified the latter three rituals based on local customs people developed over the years. Despite arguing and evidence presented, including that the Torah only mentions the lulav, Yohanan digs in, decrying that someone must have forgotten to write the other three rituals in the Torah, because no one would have made up rituals that Moses didn’t announce.
    • 8/21/21, Page 45 – Back on Yoma 42, I mentioned “The 36”, the mystical righteous beings who are believed to exist in the world, keeping order and balance. On today’s page is the first time they’ve been mentioned in the Talmud, and a few things are noted – first off, it’s more that they are beings who greet the the world each day with joy and purpose. Second, they may not know that they are among the 36. And third, it’s “a minimum of 36”, there may be many more. The point of today’s page is that as you may not know you are one of these righteous beings, to live as if you were. It ties in with a social media post that I saw going around this week, that if you believe in the “Butterfly Effect”, were you to go back in time and change a small thing it would have a profound impact on the future; why don’t you believe, and live as if, making small changes in your life today will have also have a profound impact on the future?
    • 8/22/21, Page 46 – At the end of the Sukkot festival, you’re left with these three bound branches and a citron. Now, my recollection from when I was growing up is, that they tended to be left sitting around for a few days until someone just sort of threw them out. But, by the rules, we’re not supposed to waste the etrog, the citron. If it’s a child’s lulav bundle, they’re supposed to eat the citron immediately after the close of the festival. If it’s an adult’s, they wait until the next day. The reasoning is odd, but there it is. I do know people who make them into marmalade, if they have several, but I never met anyone who just ate theirs. Oh, and I learned the word “emend”, as opposed to “amend”. I’m amazed I don’t recall learning it before. Amend is to change something to make it better. Emend is to change something to correct an error. Live and learn!
    • 8/23/21, Page 47 – Sukkot is a seven day festival. It’s defined. Seven days, one week. The day after it finishes is a day of rest. After sitting around in your sukkah for a week, you need some down time. Yet, apparently needing something to argue about, some rabbis propose that this day of rest, Shemini Atzeret, is not really a separate holiday, but is the eighth day of Sukkot, a seven-day festival, and means another day in the sukkah with appropriate rituals and blessings, despite that you’ve already held the closing ceremony. The more disconcerting part is that the rest of the rabbis actually entertain the idea and, though ultimately dismiss it, are willing to spend time arguing over it.
    • 8/24/21, Page 48 – In the Temple, there are a series of rituals involving waving lulavs, raising etrogs, marching with willow branches in circles, and pouring water on the altar to complete Sukkot. At home, that’s more than you’re going to undertake, so how do you mark the end of the festival? The rabbis say, remove your eating utensils and set them outside the sukkah, so that after evening prayers they’re ready to be moved back into your house where you will have the evening meal. But, someone asks, what if I don’t have any eating utensils? ‘What are you, born in a barn, like an animal? You eat off the table, with your hands?’ The admonishment doesn’t take, as the person persists, perhaps presaging our modern world of takeout and delivery. Fine, the rabbis counter, if you don’t have plates and silverware, lower the roof of your sukkah enough so that it’s not usable. Sounds like getting plates and silverware would be easier.
    • 8/25/21, Page 49 – Apparently, festival rituals were subject to audience critique, as, the Talmud notes, when one Temple priest accidentally switched the water and wine basins for pouring on the altar at the end of Sukkot, the people in attendance pelted him and the altar with their etrogs. The sages note that damage was so extensive to the altar that it had to be hidden away while repairs were made. No mention is made of the condition of the priest.
    • 8/26/21, Chapter 5, Page 50 – The use of musical instruments during prayer services, particularly on the Sabbath, has always been a contentious one in Judaism. Reform and some Conservative congregations use them, though most of the latter don’t. Orthodox don’t. This isn’t a new argument, as the Talmudic rabbis were having the same debate over the Sukkot flute (the Sukkot flute??? this is the first I’m hearing about a flute???) on the overlapping day with the Sabbath. Some maintain that music is created by the instrument and accompanied by voice, and therefore a necessary part of the Sabbath, some say that music is created by the voice and accompanied by the instrument and therefore not necessary (and later, not allowed) on the Sabbath. I’m still on, what flute? What Song of the Drawing of the Water? I swear, no one mentioned this before.
    • 8/27/21, Page 51 – Party like it’s 3231! That’s the basic message today, as the Talmudic rabbis launch into a “you haven’t been to a celebration if you haven’t been to one in The Temple”. Which, of course, they never did, because The Temple was destroyed 4-500 years before they lived. They wax nostalgic about the festivities at the end of Sukkot, which include not just yesterday’s newly mentioned flute, but lyres and cymbals and trumpets and “countless other” instruments, plus dancing and singing. Of course, there’s always one-upsmanship such conversations, and Rabbi Yehuda is all like, “nah, you haven’t partied unless you partied in the Great Temple of Alexandria”. Not that he did, since it, too, was destroyed around the same time.
    • 8/28/21, Page 52 – “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one”. No, wait, that’s a verse from the New Testament, one that gives up agency to a higher power over personal triumph. It’s a sentiment that’s refuted by Judaism and Jewish practice. Tempt us, put the challenges, the stumbling blocks, the baser instincts, in front of us, and force us to overcome them. Without those obstacles, would we even try to become better human beings? It is precisely because of confronting difficulties and failures that we become more than we started out as. Judaism is more Nietzschean, “Out of life’s school of war – what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”
    • 8/29/21, Page 53 – “If I am here, everyone is here; and if I am not here, who is here?” One of those proverbs that Rabbi Hillel was so famous for, and seems very apropos of his arrival at the festive scene of Drawing of the Water. Religious scholars can give it all the sacred meaning they want, that he was speaking on behalf of God, that he was talking about being present to the Divine, etc. I say, given his various rivalries, it was more likely, “Hillel’s in the house, are you ready to par-tay?!”
    • 8/30/21, Page 54 – The Metonic Cycle. I’d bet most of you haven’t heard of it. It’s the Jewish lunar calendar, and while no longer used for daily work schedules it’s still the one used for determining when Jewish holidays appear. It’s a 19 year cycle, out of which 12 years have 12 months and 7 years have 13 months (years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19) – by the way, the same cycle that the Christian ecclesiastical calendar uses for the computation of when Easter falls. Just to make it more fun, because the moon’s cycle is 29½ days, some months have 29 days and some have 30, and two of the 12 months change between 29 and 30 days, depending on the year – so non-leap years vary between 353, 354, and 355 days. All of this, by the way, is carefully calculated just to make sure that certain holidays and their rituals never conflict with the Sabbath.
    • 8/31/21, Page 55 – There’s a bizarre little hidden “gem” in a discussion of the Temple sacrifices during Sukkot. Among the cycle of the various bulls, rams, and goats who are taken to slaughter, it’s noteworthy that over the 7 days, first 13, then 12, etc., decreasing each day, bulls are specified. Adding them up, it comes to 70 bulls. The sages explain that at the time of the Temple, there were 70 known countries in the world, and one bull was sacrificed for each of them, to atone for their wrongs, even if they had no idea it was being done on their behalf. And, they lament, now that the Temple no longer exists, no one is atoning for those other countries, which, they imply, will lead to, I don’t know, international and civil wars, chaos, hatred, and global collapse….
    • 9/1/21, Page 56 – We finish up tractate Sukkot with a quote from Abaye: “A ripe cucumber now is better than a gourd that has yet to ripen. A small, immediate profit is preferable to a large, potential profit”. Abaye clearly would have “failed” the famous Marshmallow test of immediate reward versus delayed gratification, and, I’d recommend that unless you have the time and patience for day trading, don’t use him as your investment advisor.

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