Sukkah 038

1:
It is perhaps appropriate (though unintentional) that we learn this mishnah as the festival of Ḥanukah draws to its close. According to many scholars the length of the festival of Ḥanukah parallels the length of the festival of Sukkot. This theory is based on a very telling verse in the Second Book of Maccabees, chapter 1. The First Book of Maccabees is a more or less straightforward account of the events leading up to the restoration of the Temple cult and what happened afterwards. The Second Book of Maccabees, however, is in the form of a letter from the Jews in Jerusalem to their brethren in the Diaspora, the Jews of Alexandria in Egypt. The purpose of the letter is to explain what happened and to encourage the Jews in Alexandria to accept and celebrate the new festival of Ḥanukah which the Jews in Jerusalem had inaugurated.

2:
During medieval times, of course, the books of the Apocrypha (including the books of the Maccabees) were lost to the Jewish people. However, one sage, Rabbi El'azar ben-Yehudah ben-Kalonymos, known as the Roke'aḥ [1176-1238], living in medieval Germany, did make a connection between Ḥanukah and Sukkot. He noticed that the chapter in the Torah which enumerates and details the festivals [Leviticus 23] ends with the festival of Sukkot. However, immediately after it comes the mitzvah of tending the lamp in the sanctuary with olive oil [Leviticus 24:1-4]. He sees in this juxtaposition a hint of a connection between Sukkot and Ḥanukah.

3:
All this is, perhaps, an indication of the importance of the festival of Sukkot for our ancestors in Temple times. As noted above, modern scholarship believes that Ḥanukah was originally celebrated for eight days as a replacement for the rejoicing of Sukkot in the Bet Mikdash which had not been possible during the years of the desecration [168-165 BCE]. At the first opportunity, it is held, the Jews celebrated for eight days as they were wont to do on Sukkot.

4:
Now let us turn our attention to our present mishnah. You will recall that the first mishnah of Chapter 4 included the general instruction that "Hallel and rejoicing [are to be observed for] eight days". Our present mishnah asks why it was necessary to make this instruction: is it not obvious? Perhaps not. A careful reading of the instructions in the Torah, both in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy, does not make clear that the rejoicing included the eighth day.

It is not clear from these verses what is the status of the eighth day of the festival. The rejoicing is emphasized for the seven days of Sukkot but the status of the eighth day, Shemini Atzeret, is not clarified. It is for this reason, teaches our present mishnah, that it is necessary to point out that the mitzvah to rejoice and to recite Hallel (the ritual expression of rejoicing) applies to Shemini Atzeret as well.

5:
The first mishnah of chapter 4 also teaches that the mitzvah of residing in a sukkah is in force for seven days (and not eight). Our present mishnah asks why it is necessary to repeat the obvious. In the previous mishnah we saw that the end of the ceremony of the willows on the seventh day of Sukkot in the Bet Mikdash was seen as a sign that the mitzvah of the four species had been fulfilled:

However, if one dismantled one's sukkah during the seventh day how could one fulfill the mitzvah for all seven days — until nightfall? Our present mishnah teaches that the sukkah must remain standing throughout the seventh day (and the eighth day, of course, because the sukkah cannot be dismantled on YomTov). But since we do not reside in the sukkah on the eighth day it will be necessary to restore all the furniture that is in the sukkah to one's house in order to celebrate the YomTov of the eighth day properly.

6:
Our present mishnah explains how this is to be done. After eating one's noon meal on the seventh day of Sukkot we may begin to put the furniture which we had removed from our house back into the house. This may be done "from the afternoon onwards". The 'afternoon' here refers to the communal sacrifice which was offered in the Bet Mikdash every day in the afternoon, called 'Minḥah'. This sacrifice was offered during the ninth hour of the day. When one calculates the length of the day as being the total amount of time that separates sunrise from sunset, one twelfth of this time will be one hour. If we assume that on an exemplar day sunrise is at 6 am and sunset at 6 pm the Minḥah would have been offered at around 3.30pm. (However, since Sukkot falls in the early autumn in Eretz-Israel the day would be longer than 12 hours and the Minḥah would be nearer to 4 pm.