Trutharchivist

Holiday supplemental no. 7 (possibly the last one): Hosha’na Rabbah. At least one more supplemental will be coming soon, be prepared.

To begin: reading the SU I wrote about Sukkot is likely a good start before you read this one, so go ahead and follow the link.

So, Hosha'na Rabbah. This is kind of a weird one. As the seventh day of Sukkot, it actually has no special meaning whatsoever in scripture. However, the Talmud tells us of some odd practice from the time of the Temple - to set large willow branches around the altar during the days of Sukkot. Now, there's another point you must know in order to understand why it's relevant to this day. You see, since it's a 7-day holiday, there's always a Shabbat in the midst of the holiday. And there are certain problems with keeping certain commandments during Shabbat. Not sitting in a leaf-hut, this one is completely allowed, but shaking the Lulav is prohibited… kind of, it's complicated. The thing is, this prohibition comes from the Sages, which (due to how Judaism works) means it can't go against commandments directly from the Torah (Pentateuch). Shaking the Lulav, though, is from the Torah only for the first day of the holiday - so if Shabbat falls on every other day it's prohibited. How is this relevant for the willows and Hosha’na Rabbah? Please wait, I’ll get to it.
(Side note: nowadays we don't shake the Lulav during the first day if it occurs during Shabbat. It's a thing unto itself that I’m not getting into.)

You see, the thing is (for some reason), setting the willows around the altar was also problematic in Shabbat, so it wasn't done in the Shabbat that occurred during the holiday… unless said Shabbat was on the 7th day. Please don't ask me why, I don't even know where this practice originated from. But, to make a long story short: the 7th day of Sukkot is the special day of the willows. Which is probably related to the actual special practices we have on it to this day - and that neatly leads me to the Hosha’not.

Hopefully you’ve read my Sukkot SU and remember that I mentioned this practice in two words. This is something we do every day of Sukkot, after all - even if the 7th gets the biggest one. To elaborate: the Hosha’not are religious poems we… chant, I guess? While walking around the raised platform in the middle of a synagogue, holding the Lulav.

In hindsight, I can see why my brother might joke that it looks like a pagan practice. I promise this isn't magic! We just chant requests to G-d to deliver us (rough translation of Hosha’ Na, the two words that were merged to create the word Hosha’na - singular form of Hosha’not), with verses organised by letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and this is somehow related to rain.

In all seriousness, though, it's a form of prayer. It is a somewhat weird ceremony, I agree, but it's still a prayer. Either way, every day of Sukkot we say one poem like that and go one round around the platform. During Hosha’na Rabbah, the big Hosha’nah, we say many more poems and go for seven rounds. And then we take a bunch of willows and hit the ground with them.

Wow. I guess this is one of the weirder holidays, in hindsight. And it's not even a Yom Tov! Most work is allowed on this day, outside of the regular list of stuff forbidden during the mundane part of the holiday - which I may not have explained properly, but it's hard to do so in English. It does seem to count as not only a Yom Tov, but one of the High Holy Days, for certain bits of prayer, which is kind of weird. Certain traditions take this to be the really final end of judgement instead of Yom Kippur. Yet others claim that the truly final “for real this time! Seriously!” judgement occurs during Hannukah, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. Some people practice staying awake all night on that day. 

Another important point is, of course, the fact that this is the last day in the Sukkah (at least in Israel). There's a special prayer to say after eating one’s final meal in the Sukkah, referring to the world to come and a special Sukkah from the hide of the Leviathan that shall be built then. And I think that about covers this particular day, hope it was comprehensible.

Submitting it a little early - for many of you this day, Wednesday, is going to be tomorrow.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!