“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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