Do we need rituals to remember how to be happy? happier? Perhaps that is what many of them are actually about.
What accomplishment from the past year are you celebrating this fall season? The holiday of Sukkot, celebrated right now in Jewish backyards and balconies, has its origins in the successful summer harvest of crops - with hopefully enough yield to sustain the farmers through the coming winter.
That is likely the main reason this ancient holiday was originally celebrated in outdoor huts - our ancestor farmers were literally still in the fields, celebrating impermanence, happy, in theory, with their lot.
Today we still build huts and celebrate spiritual harvest as the new year begins, but we no longer perform the scripted ritual that once accompanied our seasonal festivals - starting with the early summer harvest of Shavuot and all the way to the fall festival of Sukkot.
Chapter 25 in the Book of Words lists two unique examples of participatory rituals with specific scripts for the pilgrims offering their harvest to the priests in the temple. The liturgical declaration inserted in these verses is long, and whether it was actually used or not by the many farmer-pilgrims over the generations, it’s fascinating to notice the imaginary leap, the dramatic intent and historical scope of what they were asked to read aloud or repeat after the officiant - while handing over their produce to the priests.
The ‘script’ consists with seven long verses, beginning with ancient history - ‘My father was a wandering Aramean and ended up as slave in Egypt’.. And ends up with ‘and now I’m honored to give my produce of this promised land to God.’ Parts of it ended up in the Passover Hagaddah. Amazingly, this millenia-years old script is still recited nowadays in each home where the Seder is led from the official script, though few know its origins.
Prof. Rabbi Dalia Marx has a beautiful take into into the surprising mythic depth of this mandatory ritual script:
“The context of the passage in Deuteronomy, as part of Moses’ address to the Israelites on the plains of Moab, calls upon the Israelites wandering in the wilderness with no permanent ties to the earth to imagine themselves as farmers securely living in their own land. But simultaneously, the text demands of (future) farmers living in their own land that they remember their days as wanderers in the wilderness—and necessarily as well ponder the fragility of their own lives...With these words, farmers on pilgrimage, who have traveled from villages far and near, personally experience Israelite history. In every passing generation, the farmer must conceive of himself, if for a fleeting moment, as a nomad without a land. The rehearsal of this less-than-glorious history is intended, among other things, to deter hubris on the part of the landowner...The entire recapitulation of national history comes to a calculated climax in the moment when the farmer comes bearing the first fruits of the land bestowed upon him...By concluding the story of Israelite history with the words that offer up his basket of produce, the farmer breaks the fourth wall, himself stepping out of the narrative as its ultimate culmination, and in fact, its fulfillment.”
And what’s the whole point of this ritual? Other than more produce to the temple storehouses - happiness for the people! The script ends with the stage directions to the farmer-pilgrim:
וְשָׂמַחְתָּ֣ בְכׇל־הַטּ֗וֹב אֲשֶׁ֧ר נָֽתַן־לְךָ֛ יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ וּלְבֵיתֶ֑ךָ אַתָּה֙ וְהַלֵּוִ֔י וְהַגֵּ֖ר אֲשֶׁ֥ר בְּקִרְבֶּֽךָ׃
“Be happy for all the goodness, bestowed upon you and your household, together with the Levite and the stranger in your midst. “
Basically: Smile! This harvest ritual, like so many others in our tradition and in others, was built into the culture and calendar in order to maximize our appreciation for the journeys we’ve been on, for what we have, for what’s worth celebrating, even as the winter is coming and fears of scarcity are real. Being happy for all the goodness is a great daily reminder not just on the harvest holidays. It’s a choice of focusing on what we have - not what we have not.
And I don’t know if we need elaborate scripts for it, or rituals, but at least a helpful post-it affirmation, somewhere noticeable for quick access seems like a great idea. It’s not for nothing that we have special greetings for this and other holidays - Chag Sameach! Happy Holidays! Every little bit helps remind us to be content with what we’ve got already - and to pass the smile on. Ritual style.
Happy Holy Days of Huts.
Image: Vintage Soviet Propaganda Posters. Everybody, everywhere, deserves happiness!
All week long, through this week festival, echoed in the chapters coming up in the Book of Words, other rituals will emerge, marking life’s up’s and down’s, all sacred transitions.
Below the Bible Belt: 929 chapters, 42 months, daily reflections: Join Rabbi Amichai’s 3+ years interactive online quest to question, queer + re-read between the lines of the entire Hebrew Bible, with daily reflections, weekly videos and monthly learning sessions. January 2022-July 2025
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Even as these words are proleptic for the nomad-listeners in the wilderness, so might they be for those unlanded nomads in the urban diaspora. Perhaps one day they, too, will know something about "landing" that we are so in danger of forgetting now. Yesterday, hatless and hutless, I walked alone in the meadows that roll under the escarpment of the Mohawk Mountain up here in the Hudson Valley where I have the good fortune to be living. Cows were grazing in an open field. Asters--- lavender, white, and purple--- were blooming by the road sides. Maples on fire and the first shed leaves drifting down. Milkweed silk was loose on the breeze, and I was alone in a vast silence under an unclouded blue sky.
I was stopped often by what surrounded me. I took it in. Took what in? Not the scenery, but the peace the land breathed out to me...I realized that the peace I felt was "the peace of earth." This is what is lost to so many. And I wondered if it is it possible for there to be political peace, social peace, unless one is touched by the primal peace that is the planet's gift to us two-legged primates? Natural peace is the experience of Mother Earth, enfolding us. She is calling the modern nomad to remember her. Come, feel the simple happiness that smiles to us from her incalculable consolations.