Originally published in the Jewish Journal · Table for Five
God, please, crown this year with blessing, and hear my words as I pray, on the day of Hoshana, save please, save us please!-From the Hoshana Rabbah prayers (seventh day of Sukkot)
On its surface, Sukkot seems like the most primitive of holidays. We wave exotic produce and live in a hut, re-living our legacy as both desert wanderers and farmers in ancient Israel.
But the many repetitions and urgency of save us – “hoshea nah” – throughout Hoshanah Rabbah signals we’re at an awesome, salvational moment in the Jewish year. Divine judgement may be sealed on Yom Kippur, but the envelope isn’t delivered until this seventh night of Sukkot. Redemption is still possible.
So we make seven circuits with the Torah, invoke all our prophets and heroes, implore God to save us from every imaginable peril to nature, and sing mystical poems, many attributed to the son of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the 2nd century. Here’s one excerpt:
“Man and beast Body, spirit and soul…. Heal with powerful rains. Elevate the thirsty earth, Suspended on nothingness.”
What a prescient vision of our forlorn planet hanging in empty space!
The supplication is for “powerful rains.” Like “Save Us!”, rain falls verbally throughout the night, evoking the next day, Shemini Atzeret, when our daily prayer for dew changes to one for rain. Its very word in Hebrew, “geshem” implies physicality itself, “gashmiyut.” It heals, sustains, and slakes our thirst for salvation. It elevates the material earth and our material being, bringing down a transcendent lesson of Sukkot: living literally inside this mitzvah reveals our physical need for metaphysical salvation.
