When I grew up in England, we learned the ditty: “Rain, rain, go away! Come again another day.” But when I raised my children here in Israel, I realised that it doesn’t rain at all from April to October; and when the first rains finally arrived, my children, I kid you not, would run into the street and dance in the rain.
A kibbutznik friend who grew up in the religious kibbutz movement told me that there was no prayer more serious than tefillat geshem, the prayer for rain, recited on Shemini Atzeret; he reported that it was more tense than even Yom Kippur. After all, the entire livelihood of the kibbutz was contingent on rain and these farmers prayed with great intensity.
The word atzeret means “gathering;” Targum Yonatan ben Uziel (Vayikra 23) explains: “Atzeret – a gathering for you to pray for rain.”
One of the features of living in Israel is that everything is be imbued with Jewish historic and religious significance – the calendar, the language, the scenery and places which resonate with layer upon layer of history. So a visit to the Kotel during Succot will echo the ancient festive pilgrimage to the Temple, and a Succot music festival will resonate with the historic “water-drawing ceremony,” an all-night party with music and acrobats.
And similarly, Deuteronomy sees rain as a direct link between God and Israel: “For the land that you are about to enter and possess is not like the land of Egypt ... watered by your foot; but the land… of hills and valleys is watered by the rains of the heaven. It is a land on which the Lord your God always keeps his eye, from year’s beginning to year’s end (11:10–12).
Egypt has a constant water supply from the Nile; in Israel we have to wait for the rain and pray for it. The Land of Israel connects the Jewish people to God. River-lands give a society a feeling of absolute security, a guarantee against drought:
Eliezer Schweid wrote in Homeland of Destiny: ”In the river-lands, a culture may emerge that aspires to total human mastery over the primary factors that condition his existence and well-being. In the mountainous country, however... even the illusion of mastery cannot survive. A person who lives in that land knows that he is dependent upon a force over which he has no control.”
Succot is an ingathering festival in which we abandon our comfortable homes to live in a succah that symbolises divine protection and providence. At the annual celebration of the agricultural ingathering, we look back and express our gratitude to God for the bounty of the past year. At the end of the week in a succah, we look forward to the next season, praying for rain, acknowledging that unique tool indigenous to our land – that connects Israel to God.
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