SUKKOT
Leviticus
22:26-23:44
Numbers 29:12-16
TWO
TORAHS – ONE GOD
Dr.
Ronald A. Brauner
“On
the first day, you shall obtain the fruit of goodly trees,
palm branches, boughs of leafy trees and water willows. .
.you shall dwell in shelters for seven days. . .”
Two of the most important concepts in Judaism are embedded
in the Torah reading for Sukkot. Consider if you will that
the explicit directions the Torah provides for the proper
performance of its requirements are often not sufficient,
in themselves, to enable us to put into practice what we
are obliged to do. Look at the directions above:
“fruit of goodly trees” – what’s
your notion of “goodly” – apples,
pomegranates, figs? “Boughs of leafy trees”
– okay, what’s “leafy” –
maple, oak, ginko? What is
clear in the
passage above is that part of the celebration of the
festival requires palm branches and water willows –
but what are we to do about the other two species which are
mentioned only generally and for which we are given no
particular hint as to what exactly is meant. What
specifically
does the Torah
have in mind? The answer is, as in so many other passages
of the Torah, that the details of the Written Torah (the
Five Books) are to be found in the expansions of the Oral
Torah (the accumulated body of Jewish law and lore). The
Written simply cannot be fully understood without the Oral
Tradition nor can the Oral Torah make sense without its
being grounded in the Written. It is for this that our
Sages have taught us: “two
Torahs were given at Sinai, one Written and the other
Oral.”
Indeed, it is our Oral Torah which tells us that the
“goodly tree” here is none other than
the etrog
(citron) and
the “leafy” one is the myrtle
(hadas).
Torah continues to be the foundation of the Jewish people
as it has for thousands of years precisely because we are
in possession of the means to understand exactly what is
demanded of us and how the Torah’s intentions can be
actualized as times and circumstances change.
The other great idea to be found in the reading for the
festival of Sukkot is that, as much as it may seem nature
rules over us, it is we, through God’s mandate, who
are to master it
(Genesis 1:28 – “God blessed them and said. . .
fill the earth and subdue it and rule. . .”). This
enormously significant concept, which speaks to the
importance of man and to his centrality in the divine
design of things, is acted out continuously through the
Jewish year but particularly at Sukkot time in the way we
observe the holiday. The five central symbols of the
festival (citron, palm, myrtle, willow AND sukkah roof) are
all taken from nature and yet, as the Oral Torah would have
us understand, these five central symbols can
only
be
used in celebration of the holiday after they have
been disconnected
from their
source. We remind ourselves ritually that no matter how
beautiful, how bountiful, how sustaining the vegetative
world is (isn’t fall harvest a perfect setting?)
ultimately it is God and not nature who bestows the
countless blessings of life and wellbeing we enjoy.
In our relationships with God, we are indeed subordinate.
In our relationships with the world around us -- as our
Oral Tradition teaches -- “it is for us that the
world was created.”
Dr. Brauner is Professor of Judaic Studies at Siegal
College, Cleveland, OH
