The festival of Sukkot is the most joyous of the three biblically mandated festivals. In the holiday prayers, each festival is given its own descriptive name: Passover is the “Season of our Liberation,” Shavuot is the “Season of the Giving of our Torah,” but Sukkot is described simply as the “Season of our Rejoicing”! The Torah enjoins us no less than three times to rejoice, and be only happy, on Sukkot.

Sukkot is the holiday when we celebrate Jewish unity—as symbolized by the sukkah, whose holy walls bring us all together; and the Four Kinds, that symbolize the essential unity of all Jews, despite differing levels of Torah knowledge and observance. In the times when the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, on every night of the holiday (starting with the second night), there was a grand Water Drawing Celebration.

“Rejoice” from Chabad.org

Draw water with joy, from the wellsprings of salvation. –Isaiah 12:3

In many ways, you could say that Sukkot is the happiest time of year, particularly after the solemn day of fasting and atonement just completed for Yom Kippur. There are many ways to celebrate the joy of fellowship with your people and with your God but I find this tradition to be particularly refreshing:

Unique to the holiday of Sukkot is the mitzvah to offer a water libation on the altar, in addition to the wine libation that accompanied all the sacrifices throughout the year. This water was drawn on the evening beforehand, amidst great fanfare, singing, reveling, and even acrobatic stunts performed by the time’s greatest sages.

In fact the Talmud states that “one who has not witnessed the Festival of the Water Drawing has not seen joy in his lifetime!”

I must admit that I have never witnessed the simchat beit hashoevah; the joy of the water-drawing, even as it is celebrated today, so I suppose, as the Talmud says, I’m missing out. Or am I?

Oddly enough, I woke up this morning wondering if Jesus ever built and lived in a sukkah. After all, during his lifetime, as the son of a carpenter growing up in a small rural village in occupied Roman Judea, his family must have observed Sukkot. We can only imagine that the family would make the trek to Jerusalem for the first day of Sukkot at least on some years. We know from Luke 2:41 that “Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover”, so it’s not hard to believe that they were obedient to the mitzvot of Sukkot as well. Why wouldn’t Yosef the Carpenter and his eldest son Yeshua ben Yosef build a small sukkah so that the family could take meals, welcome guests, and reside under the protection of God’s shelter as it says in the commandments?

In fact, we know that Jesus, the adult did attend Sukkot in Jerusalem, although, on one occasion, there was a bit of a conflict involved.

But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him.

Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee.

Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. –John 7:2-9; 7:14

Leaving the Master for a brief moment, let’s take a look at a description of the celebration of water drawing based on Talmud, Sukkah 53:

What was the manner of the Water-Libation?

They used to fill a golden flagon holding three logs with water drawn from the Siloam (the siloam pool is an ancient site in Jerusalem, south of the Old City). When they reached the Water Gate they blew on the shofar a tekiah – teruah – tekiah. On the right of the Altar ramp were two silver bowls. They each had a hole like a narrow snout –one wide, the other narrow– so that both bowls emptied themselves together (the wider one was for wine, since wine flows out more slowly). The bowl to the west was for water and the one to the east was for wine.

Rabbi Judah said: They used to repeat the words, “We belong to G-d, and our eyes are turned towards G-d.”

The Pouring of the Water was held on all seven days [of Sukkot]…The one who was doing the pouring was told, “Raise your hands” (so that all could see him pouring the water on the altar). -Talmud, Sukkah 42b; 48b

Of a near-contemporary of the Master, a tale of the joy of Sukkot and of simchat beit hashoevah is told:

It was related of Old Hillel that when he was rejoicing with the joy of the Water-Drawing, he used to say, “…Where I love to be, thither my legs carry me.” And the Holy One, blessed is He, says, “If you come to My house, I will come to your house, and if you do not come to My house, neither will I come to yours.”

Sukkot is a time when we desire to come to His House with all our hearts and even though the Temple in Holy Jerusalem is not with us today, we can pray for its return, we can approach the Throne of Heaven within our souls, and we can invite God to reside with us, as much as we can recite the Ushpizin to invite Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and many others, to join us as the Guest of our joy. With this image in mind, we can now return to the Master and see a perfect picture of the embodiment of living water in the House of God.

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

On hearing his words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.”

Others said, “He is the Messiah.” –John 7:37-41

I deliberately ended my quote from this passage to remove the debate that existed (and that still exists) about the identity of Jesus, and I want to emphasize a point. The connection between the Master’s words and the joy of the water-drawing is unmistakeable, and yet how many Christians miss the reference because they choose not to find the Savior of the church in the teachings of the Jews? If Jesus not only rejoiced in the celebration of water-drawing, but became the simchat beit hashoevah, though I have not witnessed the celebration myself, how much more joy can I embrace as a disciple of living water? In drawing closer to God through the life of the Messiah, I can draw that living simchat beit hashoevah into me.

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” –John 4:13-14

Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book God in Search of Man, looks at the “wells of the Messiah” from a different direction.

“For if a man live many years let him rejoice (Ecclesiastes 11:8) in the joy of the Torah and remember the days of darkness, these are the days of evil, for they shall be many. The Torah which a man learns in this world is vanity in comparison with the Torah [which will be learnt in the days] of the Messiah.” (Ecclesiasties Rabba, ad locum).

Isaiah’s prediction for the days to come, “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation” (12:2), is explained by Rashi in the following way: “Ye shall receive new teaching, for the Lord will widen your understanding…The mysteries of the Torah that were forgotten during the exile in Babylonia because of the distress Israel suffered, will be revealed to them.”

In reciting the mystic ushpizin, seven “supernal guests” are invited in sequence into a Jew’s sukkah on each of the seven nights of Sukkot: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David. The intent is to fill our sukkah, not only with heavenly guests, but with earthly ones as well, creating a meeting point and a joining between heaven and earth in joy and peace, in anticipation of the days of the Moshiach. But for those of us who have found the Messiah in the life of Jesus Christ, perhaps we can allow a slight adaptation to this ceremony, and to invite one other guest, our “mystery of the Torah”, into our shelters, our homes, and our hearts. For where you find the Messiah, you will also find God.

Where is it that you can find all of G–d? Wherever He wishes to be found.

Right now, He hides within some scattered branches placed upon an autumn hut.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“All of Him”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

“A Jew never gives up. We’re here to bring Mashiach, we will settle for nothing less.” –Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

Sukkot begins tonight at sundown and this special Sabbath lasts until Friday evening. At that point, the weekly Sabbath begins. In honor of these events, my next “meditation” blog won’t be published until either Saturday evening after sundown or Sunday morning.

May you drink from springs of living water. Chag Sameach Sukkot!