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In this episode of Hebrew Voices #227 - Sukkot: Tests of Faith, Nehemia hosts a special Sukkot webinar to unpack the question of what the Israelites dwelled in for 40 years, the historical context of the Rabbinic mandates for the holiday, and how Moses’ words in Deuteronomy are the key to understanding the spirit of the Feast.

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Nehemia: But in verse 2, “To know that which is in your heart,” right? Well, what do you mean? I thought… well, how do you… And then he says, “Whether you will keep His commandments or not.” But doesn’t He just look in my heart and know everything, and I don’t have to do anything because He just knows my heart? But if your heart doesn’t translate into action, then it’s not really in your heart. That’s what he’s telling us. Or maybe, let’s put it this way: maybe it is in your heart, but it doesn’t mean anything. For God, your heart has to translate into action. That’s what He says, not me.

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Nehemia: All right, guys, chag sameach, thank you for joining us. This again was kind of like just one of the morning Bible studies I did with Lynell. This was several morning Bible studies, actually. I’m going to try to condense them into one and see if I can do it in somewhere between 30 minutes and three… hours…

Lynell: [Laughter] You can do it up close.

Nehemia: Okay. “Houuuurs.” That’s actually an inside joke that Keith and I have. There was this gentleman who had, like, a theory he had come up with, and he asked if he could present it to me. And I said, “Well, how long would it take?” Right? “Do you want to tell me your five-minute theory? Okay.” He said, “Houuuurs.” And he said it like that.

Lynell: Did he really?

Nehemia: I’m like… he really did. No, he literally did. I still remember it. Anyway. Alright, yalla. So, Sukkot. What’s Sukkot about? So, what I love about Sukkot is… well, I love a lot of things about Sukkot. It’s very experiential. So, when I was a kid, Sukkot was a really big deal for me because… So, the first place I grew up… we later moved to an apartment building. But we originally grew up… in my younger years I grew up in a condominium, a 17-story condominium. I guess it was actually 16, because there was no floor 13, but whatever. And it had, I don’t know, 500 apartments, or condos, or whatever. I don’t know the exact number. And most of the people there were Jewish, but they weren’t observant Jews. So, my father wanted to build a sukkah, and there was all this green grass. Giant… you couldn’t even call it a lawn, it was like, you know, it was huge. And they said, “No, you can’t build the sukkah there.” And so, he said, “Can I build it in my parking place? Because you’re saying those are public spaces. I own the parking place.” They said, “No, you can’t.”

So, he noticed people had boats, and they were parking their boats, you know, or the boat carrier, whatever you call that thing, they were parking that in their parking place. So, he said, “Can I put a U-Haul trailer in my parking spot?” And they said, “Yes.” Now, my father, of blessed memory, was a lawyer, so he said, “Can I have that in writing, please?” They gave it in writing. And then he pulled into his parking space with a sukkah built in the back of a U-Haul trailer. And this made national Jewish media in the US. It was in Jewish newspapers. And they were irate, the board of the condominium building. But, you know, he had gone through such an effort, so it was like a really big deal.

Later, we lived in an apartment building, and I used to sleep in the sukkah. And I remember waking up one day, covered in… I actually was using a tarp as a blanket, because it was so cold in Chicago. And I woke up and there was a layer of snow, like probably this thick, covering the tarp. It actually probably saved my life, because it was insulating. But those are my childhood memories.

Lynell: Your dad was really smart, Nehemia.

Nehemia: Yeah, well…

Lynell: That was brilliant.

Nehemia: He knew how to work the system. He was, you know, he was a Jewish lawyer, so. Alright. So, let’s look at what the Bible says. What I love is, it’s in the Torah. It tells you exactly what Sukkot’s about. So, I’m going to have Lynell read Leviticus 23, and what we want to get is to verse 40. But I don’t know that we’ll get to that today. We might just skim through it. So, start in 33, and you guys have the notes here. We’ll read 33 to 36, then 39 to 43, and I’ll pop in with my clever comments every once in a while.

Lynell: Your clever comments. That is so cute.

“Yehovah spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Say to the Israelite people, On the 15th day of the seventh month there shall be a feast of booths to Yehovah to last seven days. The first day shall be a sacred occasion. You shall not work at your occupations. Seven days, you shall bring offerings by fire to Yehovah, and on the eighth day you shall observe a sacred occasion and bring an offering by fire to Yehovah. It is a gathering. You shall not work at your occupations.’”

Nehemia: All right. So, that’s interesting. So, now, verse 37 through 38 then shifts to a summary of… it’s kind of like a parenthetic statement, which is a summary of the entire 36 verses that came before it. Right? Like, it almost ended, and then in 39… You remember that… there was a cop show, I forget what it was called, but the police detective would say, “Oh, and one more thing.” Right? Remember that? You know what I’m talking about?

Lynell: Oh yeah! That was, that was…

Nehemia: I want to say it’s Matlock…

Lynell: Columbo. It was Columbo.

Nehemia: Columbo! Okay. So, Columbo would say, “Oh, one more thing!”

Lynell: I loved that show!

Nehemia: I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it, but I’ve been told I’m like Columbo. So, the Torah is kind of like Colombo here, and it says, akh bechamisha-asar yom la’chodesh, “But on the 15th day of the month,” of the seventh month. Right? So, 39 is like, “Well, one more thing I want to tell you.” And this is the moneyball, as Keith would say. It’s the key thing. Right? So, let’s now read verse 39. So, he’s making a general statement. “All these are the appointed times with