A breakdown of the sukkot celebrations:

• Chag Rishon (First Festival Days): first two festival days of Sukkot
• Chol Hamoed: Not chag (festival) days in the strict sense that you can work and do all types of things you can do in the regular course of your life, but people still eat in the Sukkah, prayers are a bit longer, and the more Orthodox schools will be closed. And in the evenings in some communities, especially in Israel a celebration known as Simchat Beit Hashoeva will take place – my personal word count does not allow me to get into this more – but perhaps something for next year! 
• Hoshana Rabbah: Though it is still Chol Hamoed, it is also Hoshana Rabbah – this is not a holiday in the way many of us perceive it with candle lighting, kiddush, and hamotzi (Wine & Challah). Rather, it’s a very long morning of prayers (around 3 hours) and our last chance to be absolved of our sins, with prayers for rain, lots of waving about of the lulav, and beating of the aravot (willow branches). If you haven’t done tashlich (the symbolic ‘throwing away’ of sins) until now, this is the last day to do so.
• Shemini Atzeret : (The 8th Day of Solemn Assembly). This is a full-on holiday, starting with candle lighting, followed by prayers, and then a celebratory meal (Wine & Challah). In the morning, the congregation will assemble and pray, included in these prayers is the yizkor (memorial) service as well as the prayer for rain. Lunch, like dinner the previous evening, is a celebratory meal, with Kiddush and Hamotzi (Wine & Challah).
• Simchat Torah: is a Jewish festival introduced during Babylonian times, celebrating the conclusion of the reading of the Torah and the simultaneous beginning of the new cycle of reading the Torah. The evening prayer includes hakafot, the practice of walking around the Bima (the elevated platform in the centre of the synagogue from where the Torah is traditionally read) seven times. There is a lot of singing, dancing, some drinking, and a lot of candy involved in Simchat Torah, both in the evening and day. Plus, any meal you plan on serving will be far later than you anticipate. Both services in the evening and morning go on for a while. So, be prepared.
• The day after all the celebrations: it’s all over, and though you may imagine now is the time to breathe and recuperate, that is rarely true. For most of us, we have been putting the world on hold. In Israel, there is a well-known postponer. If someone asks you to do something or get involved in anything from around August onwards, many will respond with ‘Acharay HaChagim,’ meaning ‘after the holidays’. This is it; this is the ‘After the holidays’ everyone is constantly referring to! And you hit the ground running. You pack your week with everything you put off, go from meeting to meeting, go through the hundreds of emails you put off until now. It’s like the secular post-New-Year’s-January-2nd energy, without the hype. But if you thought the party was over, it ain’t.
• Shabbat Bereshit: though we have symbolically restarted the Torah on Simchat Torah, we don’t actually read the first parasha until this week – the first Shabbat/Saturday after the end of the festivals – and we start with Genesis. In many communities, the honorees of Simchat Torah will sponsor a big kiddush on this day. We take Torah celebrations seriously, meaning there is a lot of food involved.

A bit more depth about the last days of Sukkot:

Now that I have given you a breakdown, it’s time to share some of my thoughts and feelings and how I have, over the years, come to understand these holidays and this period in the Jewish calendar, especially from my perspective as an observant Jewish woman.

Hoshana Rabbah – it’s funny; I feel like I know nothing about this holiday. It is one that I can’t recall ever being part of, save for a bit of mild irritation. Hoshana Rabbah happens on the morning before a big festival. In Israel, if you’re lucky, you are preparing for a one-day (though it can stretch into two, depending on the calendar) festival. Outside of Israel, you are looking at a two and sometimes three-day festival. And if, like me, you depend on your household to lend a hand in the preparations (in my case, it’s mainly to run to the shop and buy items I desperately need for cooking but forgot to buy), services go on for a long time, and you find yourself desperate for assistance. Not only do I forget about this every year, but so does Daniel (my husband) because he always offers to help, and then only once he is in shul, remembers it will be hours before he reappears (in our synagogue usually a 3 hour service).

That said, for those who do make it to shul for Hoshana Rabbah, there has to be something said about a religion that makes a whole song and dance (literally), along with the beating of willow branches, to celebrate last-minute absolution.

Shmini Atzeret – for an amazing essay on the nature of Sukkot (all of it, beginning to end, including the final burst of holidays), read Rabbi Sacks’ introduction to The Koren Sacks Sukkot Machzor. In it, he expresses more beautifully than I ever could the dual nature of Sukkot, the universality of a festival for rain, and the particularistic celebration in temporary booths that reminds us of our Jewish history with God. 

In Biblical and Temple terms, on each day of the festival, the commandment was to sacrifice bulls, starting with 13 on the first day, 12 the following day until the seventh day when the sacrifice was 7. In total, 70 bulls correspond to the traditional 70 nations of the world as mentioned in Genesis 10. But on Shemini Atzeret, the sacrifice was one. I have come to understand this last bit of Sukkot as intimate. We leave the sukkah; We make kiddush in the sukkah on the eve of Shemini Atzeret but then eat the rest of the meal indoors. 

What was open to all, what was universal, becomes at the end of chag particular. It’s the after-party, not the wild bacchanalia-like after-party, but that intimate moment when the formal guests have left the table, and all that is left is your closest family and friends, when you don’t need to share words, just space and time. God is a universal God, a God to all mankind. Mankind was created in His image, and we are tasked with seeing God in the face of the other. Yet on Shemini Atzeret, we bask in that particular relationship with God, the Jewish historical relationship, in which the greatest gift was the giving of the Torah and the millennia of custom we have layered upon it to keep that intimacy alive and well. It’s our relationship with God behind closed doors.

Simchat Torah is a fascinating festival. Unlike the ones prescribed by the Torah or the ones instituted by the Sages, i.e. Chanukah and Purim, Simchat Torah is a grassroots movement. A way to celebrate the compilation of reading the Torah cycle. The yearly cycle we have come to depend on wasn’t always as such. It’s only in the fifth or sixth century of the common era in Babylon that the Torah was divided into 54 sections that was read over the course of one year. At the same time in Israel, the Torah was read in a 3 ½ year cycle and it wasn’t until after Maimonides in the 12th century, who advocated strongly that all the Jewish world be on the same cycle, that the unification started.

Simchat Torah my way:

Simchat Torah, to many, seems like a celebration for the men. In some traditional communities, women dance with the Sefer Torah, and in others, they don’t. Often the image is of men dancing below, celebrating their relationship with the Torah, while the women stand above in the balcony or behind a mechitza or other such divider, clapping to the music or chatting amongst themselves.

I’m not here to state anything for or against. What I would like to share is my approach to Simchat Torah. Sukkot is a holiday of the Land of Israel; it is a holiday celebrating our journey from the desert to the Land, our successful metamorphosis from slaves to independent power with God as our protector. The Arba Minim (four species) celebrate the bounty of the land that was ours to cultivate and make our own. And yet, for most of modern Jewish history, it took place outside the Land of Israel. We established customs, big and small, to keep our religion alive without a Land or a Temple. We focused our energies on the Torah, on learning it and living it. Simchat Torah wasn’t prescribed; it evolved in individual communities as a way to celebrate the compilation of reading and learning our most sacred text. It is a time where we, as individuals and as a community, come together to attest to our relationship with God through our studying of His gift to us, the Torah. 

I’m not naturally a singer or a dancer. For me, this historical connection is a powerful one. I enjoy seeing the celebrations and joining when I can, but that doesn’t sound much like a celebration. I am as involved in Torah learning and in its cycle as everyone else in my home and community, and therefore I too want to celebrate as well. A couple of years ago, I started learning Rabbi Sacks’ weekly teachings with the ladies of my community. Every Shabbat morning, we discuss an essay by Rabbi Sacks. Two years ago, we read and discussed the ideas Rabbi Sacks shared in his book ‘Judaisms Life-Changing Ideas’, and this past year, we are about to conclude ‘I Believe‘. Every Shabbat morning, I have looked forward to these opportunities to discuss Torah and Rabbi Sacks’ ideas. This is how I celebrate. I learn, teach, and I grow closer to the people around me through our mutual love of learning Torah. I share what makes me a Jew with others, and in turn, I hear their thoughts, and we explore ideas, every week growing in our Judaism. This year, our celebration will be starting with a new book by Rabbi Sacks, this one titled ‘Studies in Spirituality‘

Food: Finally!

I’ve veered quite far from the topic of food, but now we’re back on track. Unlike other festivals, the food associated with the last days of Sukkot, while featuring customary dishes and family traditions, isn’t as firmly set in stone.

Since all these days at the end of Sukkot revolve around our relationship with God and the bounty of the harvest, our food choices reflect this theme. On Hoshana Rabbah, often seen as a last chance saloon for forgiveness, it’s customary to enjoy Kreplach, just as on the eve of Yom Kippur. These little meat-filled ravioli symbolize being encased in God’s embrace.

Similarly, on Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, it’s a tradition to serve filled or enrobed foods. Stuffed cabbage is perhaps the most widely recognized dish, not only because it’s enrobed in leaves but also because two cabbage rolls side by side resemble a Torah scroll. yet at the same time all enrobed foods especially Jewish ones help symbolise the idea of being embraced in God’s protection, so this year, instead of stuffed cabbage, I’m serving Knishes!