Water, Willows and the Eighth Day

The festival preserves memories of a lost Temple splendour. The rabbinic sources describe the water-drawing celebration (Simchat Beit HaShoevah), a nightly festivity of light, music and dancing around a water libation on the altar, of which it was said that one who had not seen it had never seen rejoicing; the custom is revived today in various forms. The seventh day, Hoshana Rabbah, is marked by seven processions around the synagogue with the four species and the beating of willow branches, and is regarded as a final sealing of the year's judgement.

Sukkot is immediately followed by two linked days that are technically separate festivals: Shemini Atzeret, the "eighth day of assembly", on which the prayer for rain begins in the Land of Israel, and Simchat Torah, the rejoicing over the completion and immediate recommencement of the annual Torah-reading cycle (treated in its own entry). In the Diaspora these fall on two days, in Israel on one. The festival closes the great autumn cluster, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, that shapes the Jewish year's beginning, ending the season of judgement in joy and thanksgiving.