THE SUKKAH. The main symbol of the festival is a hut, hav-
ing at least three walls, no roof, but covered with leaves or
straw. During the seven days of the festival, all meals are
eaten in the sukkah. Many Jews, especially those living in
warm climates, sleep there as well. In addition to the biblical
reason, medieval thinkers saw the command to dwell in the
sukkah, a temporary dwelling, as a reminder to man of the
transient nature of material possessions, and an exhortation
that he should place his trust in God. According to the mys-
tics, the sukkah is visited on each of the seven days by a differ-
ent biblical hero—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Jo-
seph, and David. It is the custom among many Jews to recite
a welcoming formula to these guests (ushpizin) as if they were
real persons visiting the sukkah.
THE FOUR SPECIES. The rite of the four plants consists in
taking them in the hand during the synagogue service and
waving them above and below and in the four directions of
the compass. The stated reason is to dispel harmful “winds”
and to acknowledge God as ruler over all. Various interpreta-
tions have been given of why it is commanded to take these
four plants. For example, it has been said that they represent
the human backbone, heart, eye, and mouth, all of which
must be engaged in the worship of God. Moses Maimonides
(1135/8–1204) treated these as homiletical interpretations
and suggested as the true reason a means of thanksgiving to
God for the harvest. The harvest motif is also observed in
the custom of having a procession in the synagogue while
holding the four plants on each day of Sukkot. During the
procession the HoshaEnah (“save now”) prayer for a good
harvest in the year ahead is recited. On the seventh day there
are seven processions, hence the name of the day, HoshaEnah
Rabbah (“great HoshaEnah”). At the end of the service on
this day, the ancient custom of beating bunches of willows
on the ground follows. On Shemini EAtseret a special prayer
for rain is recited. In a later development within Jewish tradi-
tion, HoshaEnah Rabbah is seen as setting the seal on the
judgment made on Yom Kippur, so that the day is a day of
judgment with prayers resembling those offered on Yom
Kippur. There is a folk belief that if a person sees his or her
shadow without a head on the night of HoshaEnah Rabbah,
that person will die during the year.
SHEMINI EATSERET. The last day of the festival has acquired
a new character from medieval times. The weekly Torah
readings—from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deu-
teronomy—are completed on this day and then immediately
begun again, so that the day is both the end and the begin-
ning of the annual cycle. The day is now called Simh:at Torah
(“rejoicing of the Torah”). In the Diaspora, Simh:at Torah
falls on the second day of Shemini EAtseret (23 Tishri). In
Israel, Simh:at Torah coincides with the one-day celebration
of Shemini EAtseret on 22 Tishri, the day also observed by
Reform Jews, who no longer observe the additional second
day of festivals traditionally observed by Diaspora Jews. The
person who has the honor of completing the reading is called
the “bridegroom” of the Torah, and the one who begins the
reading again is the “bridegroom” of Genesis. On this joyful
day the scrolls of the Torah are taken in procession around
the synagogue, and the “bridegrooms” invite the congrega-
tion to a festive repast.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Two useful books on the Sukkot rituals and customs are Isaac N.
Fabricant’s A Guide to Succoth, 2d ed. (London, 1962), and
Hayyim Schauss’s The Jewish Festivals: History and Obser-
vance (New York, 1973).
New Sources
Rubenstein, Jeffrey L. The History of Sukkot in the Second Temple
and Rabbinic Periods. Atlanta, 1995.
Ulfgard, Ha ̊kan. The Story of Sukkot: The Setting, Shaping, and Se-
quel of the Biblical Feast of Tabernacles. Tübingen, 1998.
Yaged, Moshe. “The Biblical Readings for the Festival of Suk-
kot—Their Influence on Simhat Torah.” Journal of Jewish
Music and Liturgy 10 (1987–1988): 1–5.
LOUIS JACOBS (1987)
Revised BibliographySUMERIAN RELIGION SEE MESOPOTAMIAN
RELIGIONSSUN. There can hardly be anyone on earth who has not
been profoundly aware of the apparent progress of the sun
across the heavens and who has not related to it, either per-
sonally or as a numinous force. The rising and setting of the
sun provides one of the primal dichotomies, parallel to those
between day and night, light and darkness, warmth and cold,
life and death, yang and yin. Night is mysterious, dangerous,
akin to the darkness of the womb. Daylight symbolizes re-
newed life, truth, logic. In modern thinking, the sun often
stands for individual consciousness, and the moon (or night)
for the unconscious, the ocean, or the feminine principle. In
children’s drawings, a happy scene includes a huge round sun
with rays like hair. Unhappy and frustrated children produce
an entirely black sky. Mentally disturbed patients often draw
their own bodies as the sun’s disk, complete with arms and
legs like rays.
In classical poetry birth is described as “reaching the
shores of light.” In the Eumenides of Aeschylus, the conflict
is between the fearsome Furies, avengers of the mother’s
blood, who constantly invoke the “dark mother,” and the
shining Apollo, revealer of truth and righteousness (and sym-
bolic of paternal predominance). The west, where the sun
sets, in most rituals represents death; the east, where the sun
rises, life and birth. Even Neanderthal burials were oriented
according to east and west. When a Greek priest faced north
in sacrifices, the right hand, stretched toward the east, repre-
sented the fortunate side, the left, the “sinister.”
In many primitive mythologies, the sun is an object
tossed up or hung in the sky by mortals or trickster figures.8834 SUMERIAN RELIGION