Sukkah 042

1:
We now come to the beginning of the description of what actually happened during the festivities of Bet ha-Sho'evah. Our present mishnah describes the preparations for the festivities.

2:
After the end of the first day of Sukkot, as the holy day morphed into Ḥol ha-Mo'ed, the first weekday of the festival, the priests would descend from the Priests' Court into the Court of Women. Here I shall describe very briefly what is necessary for our understanding of the mishnah. Those who would like to learn the topography of the Bet Mikdash in greater detail are referred to Tractate Tamid, which we studied eleven years ago.

3:
Fifteen broad, semi-circular steps led down from the Priests' Court to the main public court, which was called the Women's Court. It was so called not because it was reserved for women, but because, except in certain special circumstances, that was as far as women could go into the precincts of the Bet Mikdash. The whole of the Temple Mount was arranged in an ascending order of sanctity. The large, main esplanade was as far as non-Jews could go; the women's court was as far as most Jews could go; the priests' court was for the priests on duty and a select representation of lay Jews; the holy of holies was out of bounds to all people except the High Priest on the Day of Atonement.

4:
So, in fact, the Women's Court was where ordinary Jews, men and women, assembled and worshipped, listening to the levitical choir and orchestra playing on the fifteen steps while the priests were performing the sacrifices inside the priests' court. However, on this evening, the evening of the festivities of Bet ha-Sho'evah, there was going to be excessive frivolity and possibly some unseemly behaviour. So It was deemed seemly to let the ladies watch the festivities separately from the men.

5:
A 'construction' was erected in the Women's Court. This was a kind of grandstand or balcony from which the women could watch what was happening in the courtyard below. Our mishnah makes clear that this 'construction' was set up specially for the occasion: it was not there permanently, but only for the duration of the festival of Sukkot.

6:
The Tosefta [Sukkah 4:1] explains how this separation of the sexes for the Bet ha-Sho'evah festivities came about:

It seems that when the sexes were on the same level (the Women's Court led directly onto an esplanade) they could easily mix and this led to what the members of the Sanhedrin considered unseemly behaviour.

7:
When, in the 19th century, European Reform dispensed with the separation of the sexes in synagogue, which had been customary heretofore, the Orthodox quoted our mishnah (and its parallel barayta in the Tosefta) to prove that separation of the sexes at worship was mandatory. It should be quite obvious that this just is not the case. The separation referred to in our mishnah was not for the purposes of worship but rather for something that was more secular than sacred; furthermore, it was only for the period of the festival of Sukkot and not for the rest of the year. So it is a 'proof' which just does not hold water.

8:
After the grandstands had been erected for the women the next item of preparation was lighting. It was essential that the festivities take place in a bright light. Golden chandeliers were brought into the Women's Court. We are not told how many chandeliers there were, but we are told that each chandelier had four cups.

9:
Youngsters came with jugs of oil. Each jug contained 120 log of oil. One log was something between 450 cc and 500 cc. So 120 log would be about 50 litres (about 13 US gallons). I find it hard to believe that youngsters could carry jugs containing 50 litres of oil, so presumably we have here an exaggeration. Or, possibly, the content of all the jugs added up to 50 litres of oil. Nevertheless, if a lot of oil was poured into the four cups of each chandelier that would create a great deal of light. As Mishnah 3 says quite succinctly:

10:
The priests were not permitted to officiate without wearing underwear [Exodus 20:23, 28:42]. When these breeches were worn out they were used as wicks to light the lamps of Bet ha-Sho'evah.