Exodus 33:12-34:26 – Numbers 29:17-22 – Ezekiel 38:18-39:16 – John 7:37-44

This week's edition of The Set Table contains:

Questions and Commentary on Shabbat Sukkot
Chayyei Yeshua - A Devotional Commentary on the Besora Reading
In Summary
Looking Ahead

Questions & Commentary on Shabbat Sukkot

1. Our reading chronicles an amazingly intimate encounter between God and Moses from Parashat Ki Tissa. Why is this reading associated with Sukkot?

David Nichol

As our passage opens, Moses is in the middle of his efforts to repair the damaged relationship between God and the Children of Israel. In the wake of the sin of the golden calf, he has convinced God not to destroy the people altogether, but all is not yet resolved; tension still hangs in the air. The Ohel Mo‘ed, the physical indicator of God's presence among Israel, was moved from the center of the camp to outside. God's relationship with the children of Israel, and thus with all of humanity, appears to be in great danger.

While the community's connection with the LORD is now somewhat tenuous, Moses himself speaks with God as "one man speaks to another" (Exodus 33:11), acting as the mediator between God and the people. He is acutely aware of the damaged relationship between the LORD and Israel and its implications.  He is not satisfied to be personally on good terms with God, but pleads:  

Now, if I have truly gained your favor, pray let me know your ways, that I may know you and continue in your favor. Consider, too, that this nation is your people.

Exodus 33:13 

In a deft maneuver, he at once expresses his desire to know God's ways, to learn Torah, and asks the LORD to keep Israel as his special people.

Why would Moses link these two sentiments? Why does he in a single sentence ask that he may know God's ways and that God would keep Israel as his unique people?  Perhaps it is like the way I might coincidentally tell my wife of her astounding beauty . . . immediately before mentioning that I want to buy an XBox 360. Romantic words and expressions of devotion can help smooth the rocky parts of a relationship. In fact they are central to some kinds of relationships. While we can't exactly buy God flowers (even lambs and rams sacrificed in elaborate rituals are of dubious value to him according to the prophets), we can express our love and devotion by eagerly studying Torah. 

So Moses begs for knowledge of Torah, which is bound to rouse God's love for his people, allowing for the restoration of the relationship.  In the end, God has mercy on his repentant people (Exodus 33:17). 

The arc of the narrative in our reading is instructive.  It begins immediately after the people make teshuva (Exodus 34:8-9), when Moses expresses his  thirst for knowing God's ways (33:13), and climaxes with God relenting to go forth with Israel and keep us as his people and Moses being the first and only living person to behold a part of God's glory. It ends with the revelation of mitzvot, commandments (Exodus 34.10-26). God's giving of commandments and Israel's receiving them is, in a sense, the "love language" that maintains their relationship to God. 

So it is today. Torah has been compared to a "love letter" to us. It may take effort to see it that way, but that very effort and the struggle to seek after and understand Torah is our way of expressing our devotion to God. 

Sukkot is a time when, living in tents like our ancestors in the wilderness, we remember and rejoice in our special relationship with God, hearkening back to when we lived in faith, and all our needs were met for forty years - food fell from heaven and even our shoes did not wear out. We should take care to remember that it is teshuva and a passion for Torah that sustains that relationship with our Creator.

2. We read in Torah about the ceremony of Hakhel (Deuteronomy 31:10-13), which takes place during the holiday of Sukkot. This ceremony (which is not possible to observe in its fullness since there is no Temple) could have taken place at any time of the year; why during Sukkot? In addition, what does the shemita year have to do with this ceremony?

Nick Amic

I want to offer three brief ideas from different perspectives--symbolic, midrashic and mystical regarding the connection between hakhel and Sukkot. Lastly, I will posit a reason as to what all this has to do with the shemita (sabbatical year see Exodus 23:10-11; Leviticus 25:1-7; and Deuteronomy 15:1-6).

On Sukkot we sit in a booth (sukka) with a covering (sekhach see Leviticus 23:43). The Talmud states that the covering of the sukka is compared to "the clouds of glory [with which God] enveloped the Jewish people in the desert, forming a protective shelter for them against wild beasts and enemies" (b. Suk 11b). This idea is parallel to the clouds that enveloped Mount Sinai during the giving of the Torah (see Exodus 19:9 and 16). Besides celebrating God's protection of Israel during Sukkot, another theme arises: the unity of Israel. This is symbolized in the combination of the four species (see Leviticus 23:40) which the Midrash tells us represents the binding together of Jews having differing dominant character traits (see Leviticus Rabba 30:12). This is again symbolically parallel to the unity of Israel at the time of the giving of the Torah. The Torah tells us that Israel "camped" at the mountain (see Exodus 19:2) where the Hebrew word for camped - vayyichan - is in the singular form, denoting that symbolically they encamped there as "one man with one heart" (Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael to Exodus 19:2).

The midrashic sections of the Talmud, known as aggada, see Sukkot as the holiday representing all nations: "The seventy Sukkot offerings (outlined in Leviticus 23) correspond to and protect the seventy nations (b. Suk 55b). Additionally, the Torah also calls Sukkot chag ha'asif (the harvest festival). This brings to mind Yeshua's statement regarding the nations, "Then he said to his talmidim, ‘The harvest is rich, but the workers are few. Pray that the Lord of the harvest will send out workers to gather in his harvest'" (Matthew 9:37-38).

Mystically, the mitzva of hakhel connects the Torah and the sukka. Shaul refers mystically to our bodies as a sukka (see 2 Corinithians 5:3 where the Greek word corresponds to the word sukka). The author of Yochanan says, "The Word (Torah) became a human being and lived (literally inhabited the earthly sukka) with us" (1:14). Yeshua is the culmination of both the gathering (hakhel) of the nations and the embodying of the Torah in the earthly sukka.

Lastly, linking all these themes together, we come to one last relation between hakhel, Sukkot and the shemita. The purpose of Yeshua - the physical embodiment of God's Torah - was to hakhel (ingather) all Israel, and all the nations through Israel. He tied this to the concept of the yovel ("jubilee year", which is made of seven shemita years) by epitomizing his mission quoting from Isaiah 61 speaking of the yovel (see Luke 4:18). May the day soon come when all Israel, and all the world experience the "New Jerusalem" where "the Sukkat Adonai will dwell among us" (Revelation 21:1-4).