Hoshana Rabbah: The holiday that hasn't happened yet

(but is drawing ever closer...)

Jewish history is a cycle. The year repeats itself over and over, and certain days during the year — every year — have a character of their own.

The 25th day of Kislev is a day of rededication. It’s the day that the Mishkan (tabernacle) was completed in the desert, and it’s the day that we rededicated the Temple after the Hellenists desecrated it in the days of the Maccabees.

The 9th day of Av is a day of tragedy and triumph. Tragedy, as we’ve seen over and over, ever since the spies Moses sent to check out the land of Canaan returned with their evil report on that day, and the nation wept. The triumph… well, that’s something else that hasn’t happened yet, but we’re told that Tisha B’Av will become a day of celebration in the future. There’s also a tradition that the Messiah will be born on that day.

But there is a day in the Jewish calendar that commemorates, in advance, an event that will outshine the Exodus. A day on which the entire world will be witness to God and to the mission He has given to His People Israel. It’s a holiday that most people wouldn’t even list if they were listing Jewish holidays, because there seems to be no subtance to it. And at the same time, it seems to carry vast significance, even now.

That day is Hoshana Rabba. The 7th and last day of the festival of Sukkot. It is not a Yom Tov, on which we can’t perform melacha (specific categories of creative action), like Shabbat and Festivals.

The day is a puzzlement. Just to mention one point: when we take the Torah out of the Ark to read it on Shabbat and Yom Tov, one of the things the leader says and the congregation repeats is: One is our God, Great is our Lord, Holy is His Name. But there are four days during the year when we say it with a slight difference: One is our God, Great is our Lord, Holy and Awesome is His Name. These four days are the two days of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and — you guessed it — Hoshana Rabba.

What puts Hoshana Rabba in the ranks of the High Holidays? Why is it so important, seemingly, despite no mention in the Torah, no commandment to do anything specific to commemorate it… even the traditional liturgy of carrying our lulavim (palm fronds) around in a circle and crying out to God to save us (Hosha Na, from whence the word Hoshana — or Hosanna) comes, requires no rabbinic benediction.

Passover commemorates the Exodus from Egypt.

Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.

Sukkot commemorates God protecting us in the desert for 40 years.

Both Purim and Hanukkah commemorate historical victories.

But Hoshana Rabbah? Despite the liturgical hint of it being on the level of the High Holidays, it has no connection to any events in Jewish history.

No events that have happened yet, that is.

The scary story of Gog and Magog

Judaism is a very present-based religion. We learn from our past, and we treasure it, but we don’t live in it. We anticipate the future and yearn for the promised happy ending, but our focus is on what we do now. The future, we leave to God.

All that notwithstanding, the Tanach (Hebrew Bible) does talk about things that will happen in our future. It doesn’t say when, but references to it appear in all of the books of the prophets, and in the Torah itself.

The future events revolve around a great war, in which Israel is attacked on multiple fronts, and when it looks like things are all over, God miraculously defeats the invaders, doing so in such a way that everyone in the world acknowledges both Him, and His nation Israel. This war is known as the War of Gog and Magog.

The clearest description of this war appears in the book of Ezekiel. In chapter 37, Ezekiel promises that God will bring the Jewish nation back to life, and restore it to its land. In the next two chapters, he describes the war. Zechariah also describes the war and its aftermath in chapter 14 of his book.

Gog, the leader of the land of Magog, is going to attack Israel with a coalition of a number of countries. All the names used for the countries, as well as for Gog himself, are names that existed at the time of Ezekiel. For example, the Hebrew for the then-king of Phrygia, Gyges, was Gog. Phrygia existed where Turkey does today. Does that mean that Gog will be a leader of Turkey? We don’t know. Does it mean that Gog will be the leader of a coalition of countries? We don’t know.

I’m not going to go into detail about the war, because we don’t have a lot of it. Suffice it to say that at the climax, God is going to do something massive. Something called The Great and Awesome/Terrible Day of God. It’s going to be something so enormous that the whole world will acknowledge Him. And us. The dead of those attacking us will be so multitudinous that we’ll be burying them for the next seven years.

And the day that all this happens? Hoshana Rabbah.

Referring to this same day, Jeremiah says (16:14-15):

לָכֵן הִנֵּה יָמִים בָּאִים נְאֻם ה' וְלֹא יֵאָמֵר עוֹד חַי ה' אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלָה אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם. כִּי אִם חַי ה' אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלָה אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל מֵאֶרֶץ צָפוֹן וּמִכֹּל הָאֲרָצוֹת אֲשֶׁר הִדִּיחָם שָׁמָּה וַהֲשִׁבֹתִים עַל אַדְמָתָם אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי לַאֲבוֹתָם

Therefore, behold, days are coming, says God, that it will no longer be said, “As God lives, who raised the Children of Israel out of Egypt”, but rather “As God lives, who raised the Children of Israel from the land of the North and from all the lands He had pushed them to, and brought them back to their land, which God gave to their fathers.”

The Sages say that this means the Great and Awesome Day of God will outshine the Exodus, with all the plagues and miracles and wonders and sea-splitting.

Water

Hoshana Rabbah, say the Sages, is the day that the world is judged on water. The day on which is determined how much water each land gets during the coming year. And after the Great and Awesome Day of God, any country that doesn’t send representatives to worship at the Third Temple during Sukkot will get no rain for the following year. Not a drop. And in Egypt, where they rely on the Nile flooding, rather than rain, if they don’t come and worship God at the Temple in Jerusalem, the Nile won’t flood for them that year.

That day, Kaddish, and God’s plan

About that day God says, through Ezekiel (38:23), “And I will be made great and I will be made holy and I will be made known to the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am God.” The beginning is sometimes rendered as “And I will be magnified and santified...”

.וְהִתְגַּדִּלְתִּי וְהִתְקַדִּשְׁתִּי וְנוֹדַעְתִּי לְעֵינֵי גּוֹיִם רַבִּים וְיָדְעוּ כִּי אֲנִי ה

This may sound familiar to some of you. It’s the source of the Kaddish prayer that we say during our prayers. The first paragraph of Kaddish can be translated like this:

May His great Name be magnified and sanctified in the world that He created according to His will, and may His Kingdom reign in our lifetimes and in the lifetimes of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon, and let us say amen.

It can also be translated like this:

His great Name will be magnified and sanctified in the world that He created according to His will, and His Kingdom will reign in our lifetimes and in the lifetimes of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon, and let us say amen.

Both are acceptable translations of the words, given the way Hebrew works. The first one is a prayer. The second is an affirmation. As to which is closer to the original, the answer is: both. Or neither. The Hebrew connotes both simultaneously.

One of the reasons we say Kaddish for loved ones after they die is that when they first die, they suddenly see their entire lives unfiltered. And they can become overwhelmed by the significance and repercussions of those things they did wrong. We say Kaddish to comfort their spirits and let them know that despite whatever they may possibly have done (or failed to do), God’s plan will reach its denoument. Everything will work out for the best in the end.

Read the Haftarot on Sukkot and Simchat Torah this year. Understand that these are things that are actually going to happen. Probably sooner, rather than later, given the way things are going.