From the sources by Eliezer Segal: A Celebration for the Nations

by Eliezer Segal

(AJNews) – Several decades ago, a distinguished looking gentleman in a Christian clerical collar used to show up annually at our synagogue during the Sukkot services. He explained that he did so in fulfilment of Zechariah’s vision of the end of days, which describes how the nations of the world “shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.”

The perception that Sukkot has a uniquely ecumenical flavour is indeed quite widespread among several Christian denominations and inspires pilgrimages of gentiles to Jerusalem during the festive season.

The sages of the Talmud found an allusion to this idea in  the Torah, in the complex sequence of the sacrifices offered in the temple during the festival’s seven days. On each day the community brings as burnt-offerings two rams, fourteen lambs and a quantity of bulls that diminishes daily, commencing on the first day with thirteen and subtracting one each day until arriving at thirteen bulls on the seventh day. Thus, the total number of bulls adds up to seventy (13+12+11+10+9+8+7=70).

Of course, the Bible has a well-known predilection for the number seven and its multiples. But the Jewish sages also noted that the sum could be equated with the number of nations in the world as calculated from the scriptural listing of Noah’s descendants. Indeed, some rabbis derived from this that the sacrifices offered on this holiday were intended to benefit all the nations of the world. Some medieval commentators limited the benefits to physical rainfall (one of the key themes of the rabbinic Sukkot celebration), rather than to the atonement of sins that is normally achieved by sacrifices.

Not everybody was eager to expound the numbers of sacrificial offerings.

In a remarkable passage in his Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides dealt with the rabbinic distinction between rational laws and those that are designated as hukkim [statutes], that seem to defy explanation and were widely understood to have an esoteric mystical purpose. He explained that the difference is really one between general principles and their particular applications. Thus, the general institution of sacrificial worship is something that can be justified in humanly comprehensible terms, however there is no rational basis for determining how many, what species or on which occasions the specific offerings should be brought. And yet, unless these were set out by Torah law, the general rule would never be implemented! According to Maimonides, it is these arbitrary random details of implementation that are designated as “statutes” and have no inherent significance of their own. “You ask why must a lamb be sacrificed and not a ram? But the same question would be asked, why a ram had been ordained instead of a lamb, so long as one particular kind is required. The same is to be said as to the question why were seven lambs sacrificed and not eight; the same question might have been asked if there were eight, ten, or twenty lambs, so long as some definite number of lambs were sacrificed.” Few Jewish commentators followed Maimonides’ lead in such cases.

As the relations between the Jews and their non-Jewish environment became increasingly hostile, the ancient texts came to be treated more negatively.

Rabbi Yohanan lamented how those myopic Romans had destroyed the Jewish temple from whose blessings they benefited. Several traditions introduced a reproof of the nations (having in mind, presumably, the Roman or Byzantine empires) along the lines of: “Israel said before the Holy One: Behold, we are offering up seventy bulls on behalf of the seventy nations. Therefore, they should love us. And yet not only do they not love us, but they even despise us!”

The Talmud imagined a scenario in the messianic future when the oppressive empires of Rome and Persia will beg for a last chance to redeem themselves by observing the pleasant precept of Sukkot; but at the first sign of inclement weather they back out, offering a damning contrast to the Jews who remain steadfastly committed to the mitzvah.

Some commentators, like Rashi, pointed out that the descending order of the number of bull-offerings should be read as a portent of the weakening and eventual elimination of the heathen peoples and their celestial representatives. One midrashic text explained that the sacrifices were intended not to protect the seventy nations, but to safeguard Israel from them.

Rabbi Bahya ben Asher explained that the festival sacrifices served to unite the world’s nations and bring them close [the basic meaning of the Hebrew word for sacrifice: “korban] to the realization that the entire universe derives ultimately from the one Creator, the metaphysical First Cause of being. In this sense they achieve atonement for their sins of heresy and idolatry, as they realize that they wield no earthly dominion that does not originate from the Almighty.

A similar approach was taken by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, writing in the optimistic spirit of the nineteenth-century European Enlightenment. For him the diminishing numbers of offerings denote the lessening of the spiritual and ethical differences that separate the Jews from their neighbours— the result of Israel’s beneficial influence in instructing humanity. As we approach history’s metaphoric “seventh day,” the differences cease to exist, and all humankind is unified in their acknowledgement of the one supreme “shepherd.” Although Jews and non-Jews will then have equal spiritual worth before the Lord, this will not mean that differences will be completely eradicated. Jews will continue to be bound to the commandments of their unique Torah, while the rest of humanity will  achieve their fulfillment by observing a more general religious code.

In our present situation, Rabbi Hirsch’s vision of human moral progress hardly seems imminent. And yet, the serene Sukkot ambience inspires us not to abandon hope for a future when the tabernacle of divine peace will be spread over Israel and the world.

Eliezer Segal is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter