# Sukkot: Liberating the People and the Land from the "Nation" ![[All Walls Are Temporary.jpg]] ## 1 Sukkot: When Citizens become Sojourners | Vayikra 23 | ויקרא כג | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | (39) Mark, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the yield of your land, you shall observe the festival of יהו-ה [to last] seven days: a complete rest on the first day, and a complete rest on the eighth day. | (לט) אַ֡ךְ בַּחֲמִשָּׁה֩ עָשָׂ֨ר י֜וֹם לַחֹ֣דֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֗י בְּאׇסְפְּכֶם֙ אֶת־תְּבוּאַ֣ת הָאָ֔רֶץ תָּחֹ֥גּוּ אֶת־חַג־יְהֹוָ֖-ה שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֑ים בַּיּ֤וֹם הָֽרִאשׁוֹן֙ שַׁבָּת֔וֹן וּבַיּ֥וֹם הַשְּׁמִינִ֖י שַׁבָּתֽוֹן׃ | | (42) You shall live in booths seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, (43) in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt—I, your God יהו-ה. | (מב) בַּסֻּכֹּ֥ת תֵּשְׁב֖וּ שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֑ים כׇּל־הָֽאֶזְרָח֙ בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל יֵשְׁב֖וּ בַּסֻּכֹּֽת׃ (מג) לְמַ֘עַן֮ יֵדְע֣וּ דֹרֹֽתֵיכֶם֒ כִּ֣י בַסֻּכּ֗וֹת הוֹשַׁ֙בְתִּי֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בְּהוֹצִיאִ֥י אוֹתָ֖ם מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם אֲנִ֖י יְהֹוָ֥-ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶֽם׃ | | Rashar Hirsch's Torah Commentary | רש"ר הירש, בפירוש לתורה, על אתר | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | All the citizens of Israel shall dwell in booths — usually only strangers, the homeless, and the stateless live in booths. But on the festival, it is specifically _‘all the citizens of Israel’_ — native-born citizens who possess full civil rights — who shall dwell in booths. | כל האזרח בישראל ישבו בסכת – בדרך כלל רק גֵרים מחוסרי בית וחסרי מדינה דרים בסוכות. אמנם בחג, דווקא ״כל האזרח בישראל״ – אזרחים ילידי הארץ, שיש להם את מלוא הזכויות האזרחיות – הם יישבו בסוכות. | - We sit in *sukkot* to remember our liberation from slavery. (Bavli Sukkah explains that's why it can't be higher than 20 *amot*, so that we see we are in a *sukkah* and remember the Exodus) - The simple meaning of the verse, as Rashar Hirsch emphasizes, is that *citizens* must sit in *sukkot*. (That's the simple meaning. Interestingly, the Rabbis interpret it to include resident aliens.) - As Hirsch suggests, the *sukkah* is the shelter of the sojourner: In Mishnah Sukkah we learn that it must be: - Temporary - דירת ארעי, - The protective roof (סכך) must be natural - גידולו מן הקרקע - But not a solid branch from a living tree - אינו מחובר - And it cannot be a human-made tool (or fruit) that could become ritually impure - שאינו מקבל טומאה. - The סכך must provide some protection (more shade than light - צלתה מרובה מחמתה) - But not completely impervious: Ideally, you can see big stars through it. Some rain will therefore also get through. - **Why must the citizen become a sojourner to remember the liberation from slavery?** ## 2 Becoming a Sojourner in The Sukkah as a Vehicle of גאולה (*geulah*): Redemption/Liberation - Above we read, *(42) You shall live in booths seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, (43) in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths **when I brought them out** of the land of Egypt—I, your God יהו-ה.* - According to Yerushalmi Pesachim, *when I brought them out* is one of the *four terms of* *geulah/liberation* parallel to the four cups of the Pesach *seder*. - So the *sukkah* is a symbolic embodiment of גאולה *geulah*. - We gather another piece of the puzzle from a related use of the concept *geulah* in Vayikra: The redemptive power of the Jubilee year, that releases slaves, forgives loans and overturns land ownership transactions (the land reverts to a kind of pre-market existence and becomes an inheritance of the people divided into tribes and families). - In that context גאולה, *geulah* plays a critical role: | Vayikra 25 23 | ויקרא כה כג | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me. Throughout the land that you hold, you must provide for the redemption (גאולה, *geulah*) of the land. | וְהָאָ֗רֶץ לֹ֤א תִמָּכֵר֙ לִצְמִתֻ֔ת כִּי־לִ֖י הָאָ֑רֶץ כִּֽי־גֵרִ֧ים וְתוֹשָׁבִ֛ים אַתֶּ֖ם עִמָּדִֽי׃ וּבְכֹ֖ל אֶ֣רֶץ אֲחֻזַּתְכֶ֑ם גְּאֻלָּ֖ה תִּתְּנ֥וּ לָאָֽרֶץ׃ | - We are commanded to remember that we are *sojourners* on the Land/Earth, not owners. We must provide for the the *redemption* of the Land, which means in this context that the land cannot be permanently bought or sold. - **The experience of the *sukkah* with its roof of branches that let starlight and rain inside and its viscerally temporary existence is the ritual embodiment of the relationship to the land manifest in the idea of גאולה *geulah* - in which monetary transactions are annulled and the land goes back to a pre-market existence. This same word, *geulah* is the act of redemption from slavery in *mitsrayim*, what we sit in the sukkah to remember.** - **Why then does the citizen become sojourner to remember liberation from slavery? Because by becoming sojourners in the process of *redemption* we understand that we are not owners/masters - not of the Land and not of each other. The *sukkah* becomes a vehicle and embodied symbol of redemption: The Sukkah is the negation of the owner/master-slave relation in regard to state and land.** ## 3 The Sukkah as the Ritual Embodiment of Open Borders | From Rashar Hirsch's *Horeb* on Sukkot | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Yea, move into the sukkah as a citizen of the world, youth of Israel! When, in the future the prophets and Sages of old gave us in their utterances a glimpse of what is to be when, in the future, humankind will have learnt from their own experience the emptiness and unreality of their labours, begun with Babel and directed to basing their life upon earthly goods but without God, they will move into the sukkah. Then will a familial bond encircle humankind, and, united as one family under one God, they will be freed from the worship of the idol of *mammon* . Then will the One God receive them all in the Tabernacle of Peace… | | <br>**Rashar Hirsch Torah Commentary Shmot 1:14** | | [Rashar Hirsch explains the phenomenon of slavery:] <br>**The root and beginning of this indescribable maltreatment was גרות, the supposed lack of rights of a foreigner, as such.** That is why the laws of the Torah concerning the rights of foreigners offer the profoundest contrast to all other national laws up to this very day. Twenty-four times, whenever, and in every case, where the Torah lays down the law concerning rights of persons and things, the "stranger in the land" is placed under the special protection of the Law. The degree of justice in a land is measured, not so much by the rights accorded to the native-born inhabitants, to the rich, or people who have, at any rate, representatives or connections who look after their interests, but by what justice is meted out to the completely unprotected "stranger". <br><br>**The absolute equality in the eyes of the Law between the native and the foreigner forms the very basic foundation of Jewish jurisdiction. *In Jewish Law it is not nationality that bestows human rights but human rights which bestow nationality! and the Torah knows no distinction between the rights of man and the rights of citizen. Everyone who acknowledged the moral laws of humanity — the שבע מצות ב"נ — could claim the right of domicile in Judea.*** This principle, this respect for human beings as such, apart from all chance of birth and fate, is proclaimed everywhere in the Torah by remembrance of what was experienced in Egypt. In Egypt, the cleverly calculated lowering of the rights of the Jews on the score of their being aliens came first, the harshness and cruelty followed by itself, as it always does and will, when the basic idea of Right has first been given a wrong conception."<br><br>[The key line above in the original:] *Im jüdischen Rechte verleiht nicht die Heimat das Menschenrecht, sondern das Menschenrecht verleiht die Heimat! Und zwischen Menschen- und Bürgerrecht kennt das jüdische Gesetz keine Scheidung*] | - **Rashar Hirsch posits that the distinction between human and civil rights signifies the division of the population into arbitrary categories called "citizens" and "strangers" and that this division is the root of slavery.** Therefore, Torah Law and the Jewish State (as he interprets them) make no distinction between human and civil rights, and any law-abiding human on earth can choose to move to Israel and receive full citizenship. - In practice, Hirsch accommodated the German ethno-state on its own terms. He was not a revolutionary. But the logic of his analysis of slavery, and his ideal anti-slavery Jewish state, suggests that in his view the global order of nation-states is established on the foundation of slavery: The idea that some people in whatever land should not have full citizen rights because they are "strangers" (גרים, *gerim*, sojourners). ## 4 "Nationalizing" Racism **Nandita Sharma, "Racism". In: Anderson, B., Hughes, V. (eds) _Citizenship and its Others_. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship Series.** - Hirsch and the contemporary scholar Nandita Sharma seem to share an almost identical analysis of the nation-state, even as Hirsch spoke about the order taking shape before WWI and Sharma is talking about the present post-WWII nation-state order. > **I believe it is important that we understand the national form of state power as one that *inherently* organizes human ‘society’ *as a racialized community*, one in which citizenship operates to create a positively racialized ‘nation’ and a negatively racialized other.** Such practices are profoundly consequential. In our world of nation-states, rights largely flow from which national citizenship one has as well as on whether or not one holds the status of national citizen in the places one lives and works. […] > > **Thus, ideas of national belonging are proprietal in character: national citizenship is modelled after private property rights. As private property owners do, ‘national citizens’ assert the right to exclude ‘non-nationals/ non-citizens’ from the enjoyment of what is theirs.** ‘We’ feel that ‘they’ should not have that which ‘we’ believe is exclusively ‘ours’ (these could be rights, entitlements, jobs, homes, schools, safety, peace or a sense of belonging). **The proprietal character of national citizenship organizes the legitimacy for subjecting those rendered as the ‘others’ of the ‘nation’ to differential treatment under the law or to outright physical exclusion (and even extermination).** - For Hirsch, the division between citizen and stranger is the root of **slavery**. For Sharma, it is the principle that "organizes the legitimacy for…**physical exclusion (and even extermination)"** ## 5 Key Points - In the footsteps of Rashar Hirsch, perhaps the first Jewish civil-rights activist, the *halakha* and experience of the *sukkah* are a symbolic embodiment of a relationship of גאולה (*geulah*, redemption/liberation) to the Land and to each other. *Geulah* is the negation of the master/owner-slave dynamic in the context of the Land and the State. - The political manifestation of the *geulah* embodied in the *sukkah* is the abolition of the racialized ethno/"nation"-state, which is predicated on the illusion that a racialized "nation" is the master/owner of the Land (both *eretz yisrael* and the Earth) and the State. - This illusion establishes the arbitrary categories of "citizen" and "stranger", "national" and "foreigner", which are the root of slavery, Apartheid and genocide. - The *sukkah* is thus the negation of the root of slavery, Apartheid and genocide. - In place of the ethnocratic state comes **מדינת כל אזרחיה** - "a state of all its citizens". Since Hirsch's conception also annuls the distinction between "citizen" and "stranger", it would be better to call the *sukkah* state: <div class="hebrew" div style="font-weight: bold;" align=center> מדינת כל מסתנניה</div> <div class="English" div style="font-weight: bold;" align=center> A state of all its (so-called) 'infiltrators'</div> - A State of all its "infiltrators" is a Jewish State. All humans may choose to become citizens of this state. - The State of Israel as an ethno-Apartheid state is the negation of a Jewish state. It defiles and subjugates the Land and the People.