Succot is one of Israel's three pilgrim festivals. The other two are Passover and Pentecost (Shavuot). This means that one must go to Jerusalem to celebrate them. Other festivals can be celebrated in one's own town, but these three must be celebrated in Jerusalem.
Succot is different from the other two in
that it has only one name, Hag Hasuccot, whereas the others have three. These names signify three dimensions of the feast: a historical 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 harmony and unity exist between the nation of Israel, nature, and God.
In celebrating Succot, however, we acknowledge an even higher unity, namely, the unity of all mankind.
Without mankind, the well-ordered
arrangement of things would be disturbed 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 God's sovereignty. The nation of Israel does this by celebrating
the festivals.
Sukkot, however, is unique 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 seven days instead of in his regular home, a Jew symbolically goes outside 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 provide the Jew shelter.
On Passover and Pentecost, Jews celebrate
that they became a nation. On Tabernacles, Jews celebrate their equality with other
countries.
Universalism requires individualism. At
Passover, with the exodus from Egypt and at Pentecost, by receiving the law on Mt. Sinai, the Jews 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, fix the
national character of the Jewish people.
Once they have a clear picture of who
they are, know and are proud of their national heritage, they can join the rest of the nations and live in harmony with them.
Succot symbolizes each nation's identification with the distinctive characteristics of other countries. When a nation identifies and respects the customs and history of its neighbour, it can live in harmony with that neighbour.
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 convert other nations to its way of thinking, and we won't
have peace.
Peace can only be achieved when we accept each other's differences and do not try to make everybody like us 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 every one in the name of his God, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.
