The week-long holiday of Sukkot has ended, and we return to our homes. But stop right there. Literally! There's ANOTHER holiday, one certainly connected to Sukkot, but a separate holiday in its own right. And that's what makes Shmini Atzeret – literally, the eighth day of assembly or the eighth of stopping – a bit confusing for us.
It's definitely not Sukkot. The Torah is very clear that Sukkot is a seven-day holiday. But at the same time, the Bible only mentions it in connection to Sukkot. So it's separate but connected. Which, of course, gives rise to a ton of discussion about how to celebrate and what it all means.
One of my favorite interpretations of this connection comes from the Talmud, based on the noticeable differences that the Torah calls for in terms of sacrifices to be brought on Sukkot and the sacrifices to be brought on Shmini Atzeret. In Numbers 29, we read that on each day of Sukkot, we offer bulls on the altar -- thirteen on the first day, twelve on the second, eleven on the third, and so forth, until we offer seven bulls on the seventh day. But suddenly, for Shmini Atzeret, we are commanded to bring only one bull. So first, this tells us that Shmini Atzeret is a holiday separate from Sukkot. But then, what's the connection?
We begin with a little bit of math. If we add up all those bull sacrifices from each day of Sukkot (thirteen on the first day, twelve on the second, etc.), we get to the total number of 70 (13+12+11+10+9+8+7=70).
In the Gemara, Rabbi Elazar explains that the seventy bulls offered over Sukkot correspond to the seventy nations of the world, with one bull offered on behalf of each nation. It is connected to the idea of Sukkot as a universal holiday; Zechariah chapter 14 prophesies that one day, all the world's nations will go up to Jerusalem to celebrate Sukkot.
On the other hand, Shemini Atzeret's sacrifice of one bull symbolizes Hashem's asking His chosen nation for a small, simple, intimate meal to enjoy together. Shemini Atzeret is only for the Jewish people, and it is a modest holiday to celebrate Hashem's special relationship with His beloved people. The description in the Midrash is striking: Hashem is like a king who invites all his subjects to a seven-day feast and afterward says to his beloved, "Let us enjoy whatever you can find, a bit of meat, or fish, or vegetables."
It's about the company, not the food served.
Now, it's not clear when it began. Still, this modest holiday also developed an additional celebration quite late: celebrating the end of the weekly Torah reading cycle at the end of Deuteronomy and starting again at the beginning of Genesis. This celebration of Simchat Torah – the joy of Torah - is not a real holiday but a practice that has, in some ways, come to overshadow the holiday of Shmini Atzeret itself.
But in fact, it fits perfectly – if we follow Rabbi Elazar's reasoning that Shmini Atzeret marks the special, unique relationship between God and the Jewish people, then our joyful, loud, public celebration of the great gift God gave us, his Torah, is the perfect complement to this quiet and modest holiday. We can learn to be modest and quiet in the fact of our election and joyful and public in celebrating its gifts.
About the author:
Dr. Faydra Shapiro is a specialist in contemporary Jewish-Christian relations and is the Director of the Israel Center for Jewish-Christian Relations. She received the National Jewish Book Award for her first publication (2006). Her most recent book, with Gavin d'Costa, is Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel. Dr. Shapiro is also a Senior Fellow at the Philos Project https://philosproject.org and a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Religions at Tel Hai College in Israel https://english.telhai.ac.il.