Succot is one of the three pilgrim
festivals of Israel. The other two are Passover and Pentecost (Shavuot).
This means that one goes up to Jerusalem to celebrate them. Other festivals can
be celebrated in your own town but these three festivals must be celebrated in Jerusalem.
Succot is different from the other two in
that it has only one name, Hag Hasuccot, whereas the other two each have three
names. These names signify three dimensions of the feast; an historic or
national dimension, a natural dimension and a heavenly dimension.
These three dimensions signify the harmony
between the nation of Israel, nature and God.
By celebrating these festivals we acknowledge
that a harmony and unity exists between the nation of Israel, nature and God.
In celebrating Succot, however we are
acknowledging an even higher unity, namely the unity of all mankind.
Without mankind the well-ordered
arrangement of things would be disturbed, just as if the fruit stopped ripening
in its season or the sun and the moon changed their course. Nature is only
complete if all its parts exist and mankind and the Jewish People are two of
those parts. Their existence is as necessary as all the other parts of nature.
God is above all the parts and guarantees
their continued existence, therefore everybody and everything that exists must
acknowledge the sovereignty of God. The nation of Israel does this by celebrating
the festivals.
Sukkot, however is special, because it is
the only festival when not only the Jewish people must go up to Jerusalem but
all mankind must go up, according to the words of the prophet Zachariah:
Zachariah 14:16
“And it shall come to
pass, that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem
shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to
keep the Feast of Booths.”
The booth symbolizes a universal home. By
building a Sukkah and living in it for 7 days, instead of in his regular
home, a Jew symbolically goes out of his
national boundaries to live among the rest of mankind.
Going out of one's home into the world is
the opposite of what the Jew does for example on Passover when he gathers his
family around him in his home and invites the hungry to enter.
In Succot the Jew is putting himself in
the virtual position of being hungry and homeless and giving the rest of mankind
an opportunity to show its humanity by helping to give the Jew shelter.
On Passover and Pentecost Jews celebrate
that they became a nation. On Tabernacles Jews celebrate their equality with other
nations.
Universalism requires individualism. At
Passover with the exodus from Egypt and at Pentecost, by receiving the law on
Mt. Sinai the Jew became a clearly identifiable individual national entity. On
Sukkot they became a part of the universal brotherhood of nations.
These events, namely, the Exodus from
Egypt and the receiving of the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai, fixes the
national character of the Jewish people.
Once they have a clear picture of who
they are and know and are proud of their own national heritage then they can
join the rest of the nations and live at harmony with them.
Succot symbolizes the identification by
each nation of the distinctive characteristics of other nations. When a nation
identifies and respects the customs and history of its neighbor then it can
live in harmony with that nation.
As long as a nation exists on earth that
thinks its way is the only right way and all other ways are wrong it will try
to make war to bring other nations over to its way of thinking and we won't
have peace.
Peace can only be achieved when we accept
the differences of each other and not try to make everybody like ourselves or
try to make ourselves like others.
We all live in the house of the Lord. The
world is His house.
Only by love and acceptance of one
another will His house be established.
Micah 4:5
Let all people walk
everyone in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our
God for ever and ever.
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