“Y

ou know, I heard 
Sukkot is an agricul-
tural holiday. Is that 
true?” 
So began a conversation I’
ve 
thought about for years. The 
answer to the question is, of 
course, yes. But the 
answer to the chal-
lenge posed by my 
friend’
s question is 
more nuanced. 
My friend is a 
decidedly modern 
woman, educated, 
with a high-pow-
ered career in the financial world. 
She was also raised in the former 
Soviet Union, and risking her life 
as a Refusenik didn’
t necessarily 
change the secular bent of her 
thinking. Surrounded now by 
friends who were fairly observant, 
her question was staking a claim, 
planting a flag in the Land of the 
Practical. 
An agricultural holiday is a 
practical thing. It celebrates food. 
There’
s nothing more practical 
than food. Around the globe and 
across the millennia, humans 
have held harvest festivals. They 
persist to this day, though largely 

as a quaint nod to the past. There’
s 
a unique aspect though when it 
comes to Sukkot. To paraphrase 
another holiday question, some-
thing about this harvest festival 
differs from all others…
Sukkot is held in the middle of 
the harvest season. The Hebrew 
date is the 15th of Tishri, which 
can fall anywhere from mid-Sep-
tember to mid-October. There’
s 
no guarantee that all the work will 
be done by that date. 
Also, unlike the majority of 
harvest festivals, Sukkot lasts for 
a full week, with an extra eighth 
day of celebration tacked on at 
the end. And somewhat ironically, 
the holiday that celebrates the 
culmination of work in the fields 
is itself quite labor intensive. The 
people are commanded to build 
a small hut — the sukkah — and 
dwell therein for the duration of 
the holiday. This means that field 
hands would be occupied gather-
ing materials and constructing the 
sukkah prior to the festival, setting 
up whatever might be required 
for “dwelling” (different traditions 
have different interpretations) and 
then taking it all down afterwards. 
Palm fronds, myrtle and willow 

branches had to be gathered and 
bound together as a lulav, and 
together with a citron fruit/etrog 
there would be daily processions 
and blessings. This involves still 
more logistics, more time away 
from the fields. If that were not 
enough, the last mention of 
Sukkot in the Torah includes a 
directive to be all together joy-
ful. Even the Talmud recalls the 
incredible festive atmosphere. 
None of this sounds especially 
practical or even rational. 
To get a sense of what this 
means in modern terms, imagine 
if all the accountants were legally 
required to take a full week off 
from work just at the peak of tax 
season with no option for filing an 
extension. Imagine how stressful 
that would be, not just for the 
accountants but for all the clients 
depending on them. It would 
seem entirely crazy to do that. 
Even when to outside observers 
a behavior appears completely 
nonfunctional, a deep need in the 
individual is being filled by that 
behavior. We can apply this con-
cept to society as well. 
Traditional observance of 
Sukkot could have appeared to 

be nonfunctional. And yet clear-
ly people functioned and even 
thrived. This counterintuitive 
fact might just be the point of the 
holiday. In the middle of difficult, 
crucial, time-sensitive work, we 
are compelled to drop what we’
re 
doing, leave our comfort zone, 
engage in religious ceremonies 
and revel with family and friends. 
In his TED Talk “Start With 
Why,
” Simon Sinek asks, “What’
s 
your purpose? What’
s your cause? 
What’
s your belief? Why does 
your organization exist? Why do 
you get out of bed in the morning, 
and why should anyone care?” 
It might just be that this very 
impractical holiday has a very 
practical lesson to teach us. 

Denise Berger brings an anthropologist’
s 
view to her writings on culture, religion 
and the arts. 

Views

essay
An ‘Impractical’ Practical Holiday

Denise 
Berger

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