Sukkah 039

1:
During our study of this tractate we have mentioned on several occasions that one of the main themes that informed the ceremonies of the festival was the concern that the autumnal rains and the winter rains not fail, because any failure of the rains would cause drought which, in its turn, would cause financial misery.

2:
It is because of this concern that the Pharisees (the predecessors of rabbinic Judaism as we know it today) instituted a special ceremony, the water libation. Although, of course, the Pharisees insisted that this libation of water had its origin in the Oral Torah that was given to Moses at Sinai together with the Written Torah, the Sadducees (a major sect within Judaism that died out after the destruction of the Bet Mikdash in 70 CE) insisted that this was an insupportable innovation that had no basis whatsoever in the Torah. Thus this ceremony, as we shall see, was the cause of great friction.

3:
Every day of the year two public sacrifices were offered, morning and afternoon. It was a lamb that was slaughtered and incinerated on each occasion. An offering of liquids is called a libation. The lamb of the daily offering was accompanied by a libation of wine.

4:
What the Pharisees instituted was that during the festival of Sukkot the libation was to consist of wine mixed with water. On the eve of the first day of Sukkot the chief priests, with the people as spectators, would process down the hill from the Temple precincts to the pool of water called Siloam [Isaiah 8:6]. (It can be visited to this day, at the foot of Ir David in Jerusalem.) The officiating priest would ceremoniously fill a golden basin with water from the Siloam Pool. The priestly entourage would then process back to the Temple compound. When the procession reached the Water Gate (so called for obvious reasons) a shofar was blown: Teki'ah, Teru'ah, Teki'ah. (For the meaning of these terms see Tractate Rosh haShanah 4:9.)

5:
Our mishnah says that the golden basin held three logs. The log was a measure of volume. Three logs would amount to about 1.5 litres (about 3 pints). However, later in our mishnah Rabbi Yehudah claims that one log (just over one pint) would suffice for all eight ceremonies throughout the festival.

6:
The Water Gate was an entrance in the southern wall of the Bet Mikdash esplanade, somewhere in the vicinity of the Aqsa Mosque today. From the Water Gate they processed into the Temple courtyard and the officiating priest would ascend the ramp of the main altar still bearing the basin of water. When he reached the top of the ramp he would turn to his left and deposit there the golden basin with its water.

7:
The following morning, and each morning of the festival thereafter, the water would be used for the libation that accompanied the sacrifice. Next to the golden basin were two silver bowls. (Rabbi Yehudah says that they were not made of silver, but of plaster; but over the centuries the wine used in the sacrificial ceremonies had stained the plaster so it had taken on a silvery hue.) Throughout the year these bowls were used for libations and, apart from the days of the festival of Sukkot, the priests would use either of the two bowls for the libation of wine, so both were wine-stained, even though during Sukkot one was used for water.

8:
These bowls each had a spout. One of them had a narrow spout and the other had a wider spout. This was in order to ensure that when the two liquids were poured out onto the altar the water would not pour out faster than the wine. Our mishnah says that the bowl further from the priest was for water and the one nearer to him was for wine. These two liquids had to be mixed together for the libation. However, in made no difference whether the water was poured into the wine or the wine was poured into the water.

9:
When the moment came for the officiating priest to offer the libation by pouring it onto the altar he would be instructed to raise his hand high. This was because on one occasion the priest had poured the libation onto his own feet! The historian, Flavius Josephus (Yosef ben-Matityahu haKohen) identifies this priest for us. In his work "Antiquities of the Jews" [13:13:5] he tells us that one year the King-Priest Alexander Yannai poured the libation over his feet in a gesture of contempt. Yannai was a Sadducee and did not approve of this ceremony at all, as explained above. All the people in the Priests' Courtyard, however, were Pharisees. When Yannai acted as he did the people immediately pelted him with their etrogs! (See Avot 033)

David Saltzman writes:

In Chapter 3 Mishna 9 – I have a question: do we know where and when Rabbi Akiba saw Raban Gamlial and Rabbi Yehoshua shaking their Lulav. In misnah 7 – do we know the size of an EGOZ and the size of a beitza – and how it was decided.

I respond:

This is very 'out of date' – my apologies – so I shall respond very briefly.

We do not know when Rabbi Akiva saw his teachers shaking their lulav, but the incident was surely when he was a student, not yet an ordained sage.

There is no reason to think that nuts, eggs, olives etc were of any different size and volume than they are today. During the Middle Ages many rabbis tried to express these measurements in terms with which they were familiar. This led to many errors being calculated in modern times. When the modern scholars (such as Rabbi Yeshaya Karelitz, the Ḥazon Ish) realized that their computations were producing inflated sizes they argued that 'in those days' olives and eggs etc were much larger than they are today. This is simply not true. In the Galilee there is an olive tree that is more than 3000 years old and it is still producing fruit. Its olives are the same as all other olives that we know today. This, of course, does not prevent modern orthodox Jews from following the prescriptions of the Ḥazon Ish.