The Eri B. Sitt Edition and Audio Series of the Talmud Bavli, Tractate Sukkah, has been dedicated by Celia and Isaac Jamal—may they live and be well, amen—for the success of their dear children. May they derive much satisfaction from all of them; may they all grow up, marry at the proper time, and have healthy and happy children with blessing and success. May Celia and Isaac merit seeing descendants and the descendants of their descendants, until the coming of the righteous redeemer. Amen.
The tractate has also been dedicated for the elevation of the soul of Sarah bat Adel. May her soul rest in the Garden of Eden. Amen. Again, this dedication is by Celia and Isaac Jamal. May you merit to perform many mitzvot.
This page is being studied for the elevation of the soul of Nuriya ben Noga, who passed away after a short life. May his soul rest in the Garden of Eden. Amen. Page 53 is being studied for the elevation of the soul of Abraham ben Esther. May his soul rest in the Garden of Eden. Amen. Page 52 is being studied for the elevation of the soul of Amir Hamed, who passed away after a short life, and of Azal bat Frida. May their souls rest in the Garden of Eden. Amen.
We begin today’s page on 52b, at the very bottom line. We said that the lights from the menorah were extraordinarily bright. There were four menorahs, and each one had four lamps that were lit with oil. The light was so bright that every courtyard in Jerusalem was illuminated by the menorah. We also said that the women were able, by the light of the celebration of the water-drawing, to separate their wheat from the chaff and other impurities. That is how beneficial and powerful the light was.
Tosafot asks: What do you mean? How could people benefit from the light of the celebration of the water-drawing? It should be forbidden to derive benefit from it. Even though this may not constitute misuse of consecrated property, because light is not tangible, it is nevertheless forbidden to benefit from it. Tosafot therefore suggests that perhaps the women could have examined the wheat by that light, but they did not actually do so, because one may not benefit from the consecrated light of the celebration.
We said that the pious people and the men of good deeds would sing praises to the Holy One, blessed be He. The pious would say, “Fortunate is our youth, which did not embarrass our old age.” In other words, their praise was that, thank God, they had not sinned when they were young in a way that would cause them shame when they grew old. These were the pious people who had been religious from birth. They were saying, “Thank God, we have nothing of which to be embarrassed. Our youth was good, and therefore, in our old age, we have nothing of which to be ashamed.” Nobody could say, “We remember when you were different.” They had been righteous from birth.
Others would say, “Fortunate is our old age, which atoned for our youth.” This referred to those who had repented. They had now become righteous, and they were saying, “Thank God that in our old age we have been able to atone for what we did when we were young.”
Both the pious people and those who had repented would say, “Fortunate is the person who does not sin. Whoever sins should repent, and the Holy One, blessed be He, will be with him.” That was the theme of the songs sung at the celebration of the water-drawing.
It was taught regarding Hillel the Elder, who was certainly an attendee at the celebration of the water-drawing, that when he was rejoicing there, he would say, “If I am here, everyone is here; but if I am not here, who is here?” Whom was he referring to?
Rashi explains that he was referring to the Divine Presence. When Hillel said, “If I am here,” he was not referring to himself, and it was not an arrogant statement. He meant that if the Holy One, blessed be He, rests His Divine Presence in the Temple, then everyone is present. We all have a purpose, and that is why we are there. But if God is not in the Temple, if He does not rest His Divine Presence there, then who is present? Nobody is present, because we are there that night only because the Holy One, blessed be He, has caused His Divine Presence to rest there.
Thus, “If I am here” means that the Holy One, blessed be He, is here; “everyone is here.” But if He is not here, then who can be here? Hillel was teaching them a lesson: Do not sin. As long as God desires this house and causes His Divine Presence to rest in it, everyone is here. But if you sin, the Divine Presence will depart, and then the Temple will no longer remain.
Tosafot explains Hillel’s statement differently. The second Tosafot on the page says that “If I am here” refers to the Jewish people. We are saying to the Holy One, blessed be He, “If You come to praise us, then everyone is coming.” The Holy One, blessed be He, takes pleasure in the praises of Israel, as it says that He sits and enjoys the praises of Israel. Hillel was speaking as an individual, but he meant the entire nation.
Hillel would also say, “To the place that I love, my feet carry me.” In other words, his feet carried him to the place that was dear to him—to the Temple. He was speaking about God: God says that if you come to His house, to the Temple where His Divine Presence is found, then He will come to your house. The verse says, “In every place where I cause My name to be mentioned, I will come to you and bless you.” If you come closer to the Holy One, blessed be He, He will come and rest His Divine Presence upon you.
Hillel was therefore giving the people a lesson during the singing: A person must make an effort to draw closer to the Divine Presence. “If you do not come to My house, if you do not make an effort to come closer, then I will not come to your house.” In every place where God’s name is mentioned, He says, “I will come to you and bless you.”
The Gemara then brings another statement of Hillel, unrelated to the celebration of the water-drawing. Hillel once saw a skull floating on the water. The person whose skull it was had himself been a murderer. He had robbed someone and murdered him, and then others had murdered him. Hillel said to the skull, “Because you drowned someone else, you were drowned; and those who drowned you will themselves be drowned.” They were not agents of divine justice; they were gangsters who had killed him for their own reasons. Therefore, they too would eventually be punished.
Rashi explains that they had cut off the man’s head and thrown it into the water. Hillel realized that the man who had been killed had himself been a murderer, and that what had happened to him was measure for measure. He had caused other skulls to float in the water, and they had caused his skull to float there. The day would come when those who had killed him would themselves be killed. Hillel was expressing the principle that a person receives what he deserves.
Rabbi Hanan said that a person’s feet are his guarantors. They bring him to the place where he is claimed. In other words, a person’s feet are agents of Heaven, bringing him to the place where his fate is to be determined. If a person is destined to be in a particular place, his feet will bring him there so that the judgment can take place.
People sometimes say that someone was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rabbi Hanan rejects that idea. Everyone is in the right place at the right time, meaning that the place where a person finds himself is the place where he was destined to be. A person’s feet are his guarantors, bringing him precisely to the place where the claims against him will be addressed.
The Gemara illustrates this with a story. There were two handsome men. Sometimes the Gemara refers to handsome people as Cushites, because one should not cause an evil eye to fall upon someone who is especially beautiful. For example, Moshe’s wife was called a Cushite woman because she was very beautiful.
These two men worked for Solomon. They were like his secretaries, and they were his scribes. Their names were Elihoreph and Ahiyah, the sons of Shisha. One day, the Angel of Death was depressed. They asked him, “Why are you upset?” He replied, “God wants me to take the souls of these two men who are sitting here before you.”
They asked, “What is the problem?” The Angel of Death said, “I cannot take them here. They are not supposed to die in this place. They are destined to be in a different place, and I must bring them there. But they are not going there, and I cannot take them here.” That was why the Angel of Death was distressed.
Solomon therefore decided that he had to save these men. He handed them over to the demons, which Solomon controlled, instructing the demons to take them to a protected place. The demons sent them to the city of Luz. There was a tradition that no one who lived in that city ever died.
Solomon thought that he had saved their lives. He sent them immediately to Luz, where the Angel of Death would not be able to reach them. But as soon as they arrived at the gates of Luz, they died.
The next day, Solomon saw the Angel of Death laughing. He asked him, “Why are you laughing?” The Angel of Death replied, “The place where I needed them to be was precisely where you sent them. I needed them to reach the gates of Luz, because that is where they were destined to die. You thought that you were outsmarting me, but you actually helped me. You brought them to the exact place where they were supposed to die.”
At that moment, Solomon said, “A person’s feet are his guarantors. They bring him to the place where the claims against him are found.” A person will always be in the place where he is destined to be. You cannot outsmart that. The feet were bringing these men closer to their fate.
It was taught that Rabban Gamliel, the Nasi, would entertain the people at the celebration of the water-drawing. When he was rejoicing, he would take eight torches, throw one into the air, and catch another. He would juggle eight torches. There was probably a reason why he chose eight, and there may have been symbolism behind the torches, but the Gemara emphasizes the joy that he experienced.
When Rabban Gamliel bowed and prostrated himself, he would place his two thumbs on the ground, bend down, and position his face toward the ground. He would kiss the ground while elevating the rest of his body. It was almost like standing on his head, supported by his thumbs. He would use his thumbs to raise his body while his face was pressed toward the ground. Not everyone was capable of such an act.
Whenever the verse uses the term for this form of prostration, it refers to a special type of bowing in which a person’s face touches the ground. Rabban Gamliel did this because the verse says that the servants of God yearn for and love the stones of the Land of Israel. He would kiss the stones in this manner to demonstrate his love for the Land of Israel.
In his generation, Rabban Gamliel was the one who performed this prostration. The Gemara says that once Levi performed it before Rabbi Gamliel and dislocated his hip. Apparently, the pressure created when a person lifts his body in this manner places considerable strain on the waist, and this caused Levi to become lame.
The Gemara asks whether that was really what caused Levi to become lame. Elsewhere, it says that a person should never direct confrontational words toward God. There was a man who spoke confrontationally to the Holy One, blessed be He, and as a result God punished him and made him lame. This indicates that Levi’s lameness was not caused by the prostration itself, but by the confrontational words he had spoken.
There had been no rain, and Levi said, “You have gone upstairs and are no longer watching over us. You have left us—Your children—to suffer.” These were very strong words. The Gemara says that those words caused him to become lame. The real sin was that he had spoken to God in a confrontational manner.
For some reason, God had mercy on Levi and did not punish him immediately. But once Levi placed himself in a dangerous situation, where he needed mercy from Heaven, the Holy One, blessed be He, allowed him to be punished. Sometimes God has mercy on a person. But once a person puts himself in danger, he becomes vulnerable, and it is easier, so to speak, for the Satan to prosecute him. The person has placed himself in a situation in which the question can be asked: Why should he be saved? Perhaps he deserves to be punished.
This is what the Gemara means when it says that a person should never place himself in a dangerous situation. By doing so, he makes it easier for the Satan, God forbid, to open the books against him. The Gemara in Shabbat gives the analogy of an ox that has fallen. When you see your ox fall, hurry to sharpen your knife, because the ox’s fortune has already declined. Once it has fallen, that is the time to kill it. When an ox is already down, that is the time to sharpen the knife.
The Gemara says that Levi would also entertain Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi by juggling eight knives. Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi went through a certain period in his life in which he experienced tremendous suffering because of the troubles of Israel. He was despondent and upset. Levi would come and cheer him up by juggling knives.
The commentators explain that Levi was trying to tell Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi that he did not need to be upset. He was protecting the Jewish people. Just as Levi was able to juggle knives, which is very dangerous, without being injured because he knew what he was doing, so too, in Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi’s merit, the Jewish people were being protected from great hardship. Because of his merit and his existence, he was saving the Jewish people.
Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi accepted the suffering of the Jewish people upon himself. It was said that on the days when Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi smiled, punishment would come upon the Jewish people. As long as he was suffering, he was evidently shielding them from suffering. Once he smiled, the punishment would return to the Jewish people.
Shmuel would entertain the Persian king Shapur by juggling eight cups of wine. His expertise was that he could juggle the cups without spilling the wine. There was also symbolism in this: They were expressing the hope that the king would have a long life and succeed.
Abaye would entertain Rabbah by juggling eight eggs. Some say that he would juggle four eggs.
It was taught that during those days of celebration, they did not sleep. The Gemara gives the schedule. In the morning, they would rise at dawn and go to the Temple. From there, they would go to pray the morning prayer. Then they would bring the additional offering and return to the Temple for that offering. From there, they would pray the additional prayer. Then they would go to the study hall and learn.
After the study hall, they would eat and drink. Then they would pray the afternoon prayer. After that, they would bring the afternoon offering. From that point onward, the celebration of the water-drawing continued throughout the night until morning, and then the schedule began again.
The Gemara says that they went an entire week without sleeping. A person cannot actually go a week without sleeping. If someone swears, “I will not sleep for three days,” he is given lashes immediately, because such an oath cannot be fulfilled. It is impossible for a human being to go three days without sleep. One does not wait to see whether he will succeed; he is given lashes immediately, and the oath is nullified. He can go to sleep at once.
How, then, could the Sages say that they went a week without sleeping? The Gemara answers that they did not experience actual, normal sleep. They would doze off on one another’s shoulders while they were dancing. They were not sleeping in the ordinary sense; they were merely nodding off briefly.
The early commentators ask: Since it was Sukkot, how could they sleep outside the sukkah? The answer is that because they were occupied with a mitzvah, they were exempt from another mitzvah. Their involvement in the celebration was itself part of the service of Sukkot, and therefore they were permitted to remain outside the sukkah while participating in it. This is what the Radbaz says.
Part of the celebration involved fifteen steps extending from the Israelites’ courtyard through the Nicanor Gate and down into the women’s courtyard. They would descend those steps, and the older Levites would stand on them with their instruments and create the joy. We are now going to discuss those fifteen steps and why there were fifteen of them.
Rav Hisda once spoke to a certain scholar who would regularly deliver homiletic teachings before him. Rav Hisda asked him, “Can you tell me why David composed the fifteen Songs of Ascents in Psalms? Why did David compose fifteen chapters that begin with the words ‘A Song of Ascents’ or ‘A Song for Ascents’? What was the reason? Have you heard anything about this?”
The scholar replied that Rabbi Yohanan had said that when David was digging the foundations of the altar, the depths rose. According to this opinion, the foundations were not called by that name because they were made from a particular material; rather, David himself dug beneath the foundation of the altar. At that time there was no altar, but David dug the foundations upon which Solomon would later build it.
Rashi gives another explanation. The foundations already existed from the six days of creation, but they had become clogged, and David merely needed to uncover and clear them. In any event, while David was digging and making these excavations underground, he struck the underground water source. The waters of the depths began to rise, and they threatened to flood the entire world. David could not stop them; the water was coming out of the ground and was going to flood everything.
David then recited the fifteen Songs of Ascents, and the water went back down. Rav Hisda challenged the scholar: “What do you mean? They are called Songs of Ascents, songs of going up, but the water went down. How does that make sense?”
The scholar replied, “You have reminded me of the teaching.” He then explained that when David was digging the foundations of the altar, the depths rose and threatened to flood the entire world. David was with all his advisers and asked, “Does anyone know whether I may write the Explicit Name on a piece of pottery and throw it into the depths so that the waters will subside?” David thought that if he wrote the Explicit Name and dropped it into the water, God would cause the waters to recede.
The question was whether this was permitted, since doing so would result in erasing God’s name. Why did David want to write it on pottery? Because pottery sinks, whereas other materials may float, and he wanted the name to reach the opening below. He found a piece of pottery that had been blocking the opening, and it had an inscription indicating that the opening had existed from the six days of creation. David wanted to write the Explicit Name on that pottery and return it to the opening.
He asked his advisers whether this was permitted, but no one answered him. David then declared, “Anyone who knows the answer to this question and does not say it should be strangled.” One of David’s advisers, Ahithophel, eventually lost his life through strangulation. Once David had made the declaration, the decree would be fulfilled regardless of whether Ahithophel gave him the answer.
Ahithophel reasoned as follows: The Torah permits erasing God’s name in the waters of the sotah in order to make peace between a husband and his wife, when the husband suspects his wife of wrongdoing. The woman drinks the water, and God’s name is erased, for the sake of making peace between two people. Here, however, David wanted to make peace throughout the entire world. If the entire world were destroyed, there would be no people left at all. Therefore, if God’s name may be erased to make peace between a husband and wife, it may certainly be erased to preserve peace throughout the world.
Ahithophel told David that it was permitted to write the Divine Name on the pottery and throw it into the depths. David did so, and the waters descended sixteen thousand cubits. When David saw that the water had receded so far, he said that the higher the water remained, the more moist and fertile the ground would be. The earth also receives water from the depths, and the water had now gone too low. It would be beneficial for the water to be higher.
David therefore recited the fifteen Songs of Ascents, and the waters rose fifteen thousand cubits. They then remained only one thousand cubits below the surface, which was the proper level. David said that from here we learn that the thickness of the earth is one thousand cubits: When one digs one thousand cubits, one reaches the water.
Where, then, do we find water at a shallower depth? That is because of the steps of the Euphrates River. The way the Euphrates is situated, the pressure of its waters causes the underground waters to rise above their general level. This is what is meant when referring to the steps of the Euphrates: It is as though the water is being raised by a ladder to higher ground. Generally, the water is one thousand cubits below the surface, but in the area of the Euphrates, the pressure of the river causes it to rise.
The Gemara continues: The priests would stand on the uppermost step as they descended, and they would blow the shofar—one blast, a broken or wailing blast, and one blast. They were leaving the Temple and preparing to draw the water. They left the Israelites’ courtyard and began descending the steps.
Rav Yirmiyah asked about the phrase “on the tenth step.” Does it mean that they descended five steps and stood on the tenth step, counting from the Israelites’ courtyard? Or does it mean that they descended ten steps and stood on the fifth step before the women’s courtyard? The wording does not make clear whether they had descended five steps or ten steps.
The Rabbis taught that when they left the Temple, they turned their bodies toward the west and said, “Our ancestors, who were in the First Temple, stood with their backs toward the Sanctuary and their faces toward the east.” The verse says that their faces were toward the east. Once the verse tells us that their faces were toward the east, it is obvious that their backs were toward the west. Why, then, does the verse also say that their backs were toward the Sanctuary?
The answer is that the verse is teaching us something additional. They were not merely facing east, as idol worshippers and sun worshippers do. They exposed themselves and defecated in the direction of the Sanctuary. Rashi explains that when the verse says that they turned their backs toward God, it refers to the Divine Presence. The Gemara does not want to state explicitly that they performed this act in the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He, so it uses this wording.
They would say, “We are for God, and our eyes are toward God.” The difficulty is that God’s name appears twice in succession. Rabbi Zeira taught that anyone who repeats the word “Hear” twice in succession is like one who says, “We give thanks, we give thanks.” The concern is that this may suggest the existence of two deities. If a person says “Hear, Israel” twice, it may appear as though he is declaring that there are two gods.
How, then, could they say, “We are for God, and God is for us,” with God’s name repeated? The Gemara answers that they divided the statement. They were saying: “They used to bow toward the east, but we bow toward God, and our eyes are directed toward God.” They did not place God’s name twice in one continuous statement. They separated the two ideas, so it was not considered a repetition of God’s name.
The Mishnah now discusses the shofar blasts that were sounded every day in the Temple for various events. The Gemara and the Mishnah will explain the minimum and maximum number of sounds blown on any given day.
The minimum was twenty-one sounds, and the maximum was forty-eight. When we say “sounds,” we are referring to a set of one long blast, one broken or wailing blast, and one long blast. Each set therefore contains three sounds. Twenty-one sounds constitute seven sets, while forty-eight sounds constitute sixteen sets.
How did they reach the minimum of twenty-one? In the morning, they would open the gates, and they would blow three sounds. They would then blow an additional nine sounds during the morning daily offering and nine more during the afternoon daily offering. Nine plus nine is eighteen, and with the three blasts for opening the gates, the total is twenty-one.
On a day when there was an additional offering, such as the first day of the month or Shabbat, they would add another nine sounds. That brought the total to thirty. On Friday, they would add six more sounds. Three were sounded before the beginning of Shabbat to tell the people to go home and stop working, and three were sounded immediately before Shabbat began, to distinguish between the holy and the ordinary. This brought the total to thirty-six.
On a Friday that fell during the festival, there were forty-eight sounds. There were three for the opening of the gates, three when they opened the upper gate, and three when they opened the lower gate. During the festival, they would leave through these gates to draw the water. In addition to the regular gates that were opened in the morning, there were the upper gate, which was the Nicanor Gate, and the lower gate on the eastern side of the Temple through which they exited.
There were also three blasts when they filled the water, and another three when they returned through the water gate. In addition, they sounded three blasts when they circled the altar with the willow branches on Sukkot. As we learned earlier, they would sound a long blast, a broken or wailing blast, and a long blast during that procession. Altogether, this produced forty-eight sounds.
The Gemara asks: One sound was omitted. We just learned that when they reached the tenth step on their way out, they also sounded the shofar. In that case, the total should be fifty-one rather than forty-eight.
Rashi explains the system of the nine sounds sounded during the daily offering. When they poured the wine on the altar during the daily offering, the Levites would sing. They sang three chapters, and between each chapter the priests would stop and sound the shofar. Each blast was a long, uninterrupted sound, which is called a simple blast.
The Mishnah does not follow the opinion of Rabbi Yehudah. A baraita teaches that Rabbi Yehudah says the minimum is seven sets and the maximum is sixteen sets. The Mishnah, by contrast, speaks of twenty-one sounds and forty-eight sounds. What is the disagreement?
Rabbi Yehudah considers each complete set of a long blast, a broken or wailing blast, and a long blast to be one mitzvah. The Sages consider each individual sound to be a separate mitzvah. Therefore, according to Rabbi Yehudah, the minimum is seven mitzvot, because there are seven complete sets, while according to the Sages the minimum is twenty-one, because they count each of the twenty-one sounds separately. That is the disagreement.
What is Rabbi Yehudah’s reasoning for considering each set one mitzvah? The verse says, “You shall sound a wailing blast.” The verse uses a formulation that joins the long blast and the wailing blast together. Rashi explains that the verse says, in effect, “You shall sound a long blast and a wailing blast,” implying that they constitute one unit.
We know that one verse teaches that the long blast must come before the wailing blast, while another verse teaches that the wailing blast must come before the long blast. From this we understand that the wailing blast must be in the middle, with one long blast before it and one long blast after it. The fact that the verse refers to the entire unit as a long blast indicates, according to Rabbi Yehudah, that the three sounds are considered one mitzvah.
The Gemara asks what the Sages do with that verse. They say that it is not coming to teach how many mitzvot are fulfilled. It is coming to teach the order. First comes the long blast, then the wailing blast, and then the long blast. The other verse teaches that the wailing blast is placed between two long blasts. The verse is therefore teaching the sequence, not telling us that all three sounds count as one mitzvah.
The Gemara then asks for the reasoning of the Sages, who say that the long blast, the wailing blast, and the long blast are three separate mitzvot. The Torah says that Moses was commanded to sound the trumpets in order to summon and convene the people. When Moses convened the people, he was to sound a long blast but not a wailing blast.
If each complete set were considered one mitzvah, then God would be telling Moses to perform only half of a mitzvah when convening the people. He would be told to sound only the long blast without the wailing blast. That would not make sense. It must therefore be that the three sounds are separate mitzvot. God was telling Moses to perform only the long-blast mitzvah in that situation, without the wailing-blast mitzvah. At least then he was performing a complete mitzvah.
Rabbi Yehudah responds that those blasts were not a mitzvah at all; they were merely a signal to convene the people. God was telling Moses to use this signal, rather than another signal, when summoning them. The Sages agree that it was a signal, but they maintain that it was also a mitzvah. Therefore, their proof remains: It would not make sense to say that God commanded Moses to perform only half of a mitzvah. Each sound must be counted separately.
Rashi explains that Rabbi Yehudah’s position is that Moses needed to speak to the people, and the long blast was simply the signal to gather them. The Sages respond that God specifically commanded Moses to convene them with this signal and not with another one. Since the signal itself was commanded, it was a mitzvah, and the distinction between the long and wailing blasts shows that each sound is counted separately.