Sukkot 2025

 This year, Sukkot takes on a special significance.   It's a holiday of REJOICING.  It also has teh potential to mark the end of the war in Gaza.   SO MAY IT BE!   

Give those who've known loss, reason to Rejoice

10 Then you shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God with a tribute of a freewill offering of your hand, which you shall give just as the LORD your God blesses you;

Contributions - gifts 

11  and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servants and the Levite who is in your town, and the stranger and the orphan and the widow who are in your midst, Deut 16.10-11

It occurs to me that these groups have nothing to be joyful about.  Widows, orphans, the stranger are destitute.   They can't just suddenly "REJOICE".   The wise reader empowers himself to participate with God to give protection, sustenance, provision, and a REASON for these who mourn loss to rejoice.   To invite them in to feast, to make provisions for them.   In some ways the commandment is not TO widows, orphans and strangers, but to US who can make a difference for them.   And  promise that God will give that provision.   

Description of Sukkot: 

• Rejoicing

• Feasting

• The most vulnerable and needy are to rejoice:  

•  Servants, Levites, Stranger (non-citizen, without position or rights), Orphans, Widows.

Sukkot is a holiday for widows (!!!) to rejoice. Dt 16.14   “zman simchateynu זמן שמחתינו  a TIME OF OUR HAPPINESS” specifically carved out for those who have known great loss (widow and orphans)

Widows (female) are an exceptionally vulnerable group, and society was re-structured to protect them, for family to take them in, male relatives required to marry them and care for them.   The Torah commands care for widows and orphans, notably in Exodus 22:21-23, where it prohibits taking advantage of widows and orphans and threatens divine punishment for those who do

It’s noteworthy that all the needy are grouped together with “you, your son and daughter…”

in the place where the LORD your God chooses to establish His name. 

Jerusalem has not yet been appointed as the center point of Jewish religious life

12 You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and you shall be careful to observe these statutes.

It is a day of remembrance.   A review of what God has done (in the past) is a link to our future.  Gratefulness is a discipline, memory is its foundational principle

13 “You shall celebrate the Feast of Booths seven days after you have gathered in from your threshing floor and your wine vat; 14 and you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servants and the Levite and the stranger and the orphan and the widow who are in your towns. 

• Harvest

• Joy

• Blessings of God

And in case you didn’t catch it the first time…   Think it’s important enough to repeat

• Feasting

• Rejoicing by servants, Levites, Stranger (non-citizen, without position or rights), Orphans, Widows.

15 Seven days you shall celebrate a feast to the LORD your God in the place which the LORD chooses, because the LORD your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.

Deuteronomy 16:10-15

• A perpetual holiday

• Live in booths  

• Israeli and foreigners

• So you and your children may know what I did

The commandment is to those who are in a position to help, not to the groups mentioned.   Give them funds, give them relief, give them hope, THEN they will indeed rejoice.  Joy is hard to find in crushing need. A smart reader knows THIS IS A COMMANDMENT TO US TO GIVE CARE, not to the needy themselves. 

“Three times in a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God in the place which He chooses, at the Feast of Unleavened Bread and at the Feast of Weeks and at the Feast of Booths, and they shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed. Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God which He has given you.   Deuteronomy 16:13-17

• Going up to Jerusalem

• Giving

• Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot ae

39 ‘On exactly the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the crops of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the LORD for seven days, with a rest on the first day and a rest on the eighth day. 40 Now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days. 41 You shall thus celebrate it as a feast to the LORD for seven days in the year. It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month. 42 You shall live in booths for seven days; all the native-born in Israel shall live in booths, 43 so that your generations may know that I had the sons of Israel live in booths when I brought them out from the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.’” 44 So Moses declared to the sons of Israel the appointed times of the LORD.

Leviticus 23:39-44

Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.   John 7:37-39

• For those who hunger and thirst RIVERS OF LIVING WATER in the HOLY SPIRIT

October 7th and its Two Holidays

The first day of Sukkot came and went, coinciding with Oct 7, the 2 year anniversary of the massacre of 1,200 Israelis including women, children and older adults and the abduction of 251 others, The massacre and abduction happened on one holiday, and this year it falls on a different holiday, since our off kilter jewish calendar is lunar 28 day months with built in corrections so the dates slip.   

Oct 7 2023 happened on Simchat Torah, the celebration of the giving of the law, the day we “rewind” the Torah from its end back to “in the beginning”, from the last word to the first.   (this year the same holiday begins Monday October 13, 2025 at sundown; ends at nightfall on Wed, October 15, 2025, two days_   

But on the Hebrew calendar, that day, Simchat Torah, will be on Monday  last words of the Torah then the first words 

• That last words of the story are that all the LAND of Israel saw both God’s power and works of terror.   

• The first words are about God bringing creation through chaos and darkness.

That last words of the story are that all the LAND of Israel saw both God’s power and works of terror.   

all the mighty power and for all the great terror which Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.   Deuteronomy 34:12

The first words are about God creation, overcoming chaos and impenetrable darkness. 

​1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

Genesis 1:1-2

A fitting summary of this awful war.   With God’s help, the transformation of the Middle East may see its way into the light at the same time.  

34 “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘On the fifteenth of this seventh month is the Feast of Booths for seven days to the LORD. 35 On the first day is a holy convocation; you shall do no laborious work of any kind. 36 For seven days you shall present an offering by fire to the LORD. On the eighth day you shall have a holy convocation and present an offering by fire to the LORD; it is an assembly. You shall do no laborious work.

Leviticus 23:34-36

A Forever Holiday

39 ‘On exactly the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the crops of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the LORD for seven days, with a rest on the first day and a rest on the eighth day. 40 Now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days. 41 You shall thus celebrate it as a feast to the LORD for seven days in the year. It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month. 42 You shall live in booths for seven days; all the native-born in Israel shall live in booths, 43 so that your generations may know that I had the sons of Israel live in booths when I brought them out from the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.’”

Leviticus 23:39-43

• a perpetual statute throughout your generations…

• (why?)

• so that your generations may know

The Whole World Will Go Up on Sukkot to Jerusalem

16 Then it will come about that any who are left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths. 17 And it will be that whichever of the families of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, there will be no rain on them. 18 If the family of Egypt does not go up or enter, then no rain will fall on them; it will be the plague with which the LORD smites the nations who do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths. 19 This will be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all the nations who do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths.

20 In that day there will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “HOLY TO THE LORD.” And the cooking pots in the LORD’s house will be like the bowls before the altar.

Zechariah 14:16-20