Hoshana Rabba: Judgement or Joy?

By Rav Yair Vasserteil, yeshiva.co, translated by Hillel Fendel

How can Hoshana Rabba be a day of such happiness if it is actually a day of judgement?

While all three of our Festivals are times of joy, the Sukkot holiday is even more so – and its happiness is focused chiefly around the water-drawing ceremony in Jerusalem. As the Mishna states (Sukkah 5,1): "He who has not seen the joy of the Beit HaShoevah (water drawing), has not seen happiness in his life."

On the other hand, the last day of Sukkot, known as Hoshana Rabba, is a day of extra prayers and entreaties. It is even widely considered an extension of Yom Kippur and a final chance to atone for our sins. As such, it is difficult to understand how the extra joy of this holiday jibes with the fear we have on the Day of Judgement. What is even more puzzling is that it appears from our sources, such as the Zohar and Midrash, that the roots of the Hoshana Rabba judgement and that of the water-drawing ceremony are one and the same.

In fact, in addition to the hints from the Zohar and the Midrash, the Mishnah states this clearly outright: "On the Chag - Sukkot - our water supply for the year is judged and determined" (Rosh HaShanah 1,2). Rabbeinu Nissim, known as the Ran, asks how the Sages knew this fact, and he replies that they derived it from the very commandment to draw water on Sukkot. As such, during the Sukkot holiday were are judged for our water, and the final judgement is delivered on its final day, Hoshana Rabba. We thus see from the words of the Mishnah and the Ran that it is the very fact of the judgement on Sukkot that causes the mitzvah of drawing the water that is carried out with such joy and happiness. 

Furthermore, the Mishna calls each Festival by its name – yet Sukkot is called Chag, meaning simply "festival." The Tosafot Yom Tov explains that this is because, as the Radak says, the word chag is from the root meaning "dancing in circles," signifying the special joy of the holiday because of the joy of the Beit HaShoevah; that is, the unique trait of Sukkot is joy, as we say in our prayers: "Sukkot, the time of our happiness."

The question is now very clear: If this is a day of judgement, why is our Sukkot behavior not more along the lines of the Ten Days of Penitence, solemn and contrite? We certainly do not recite the Hallel prayer between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, for, as the Talmud quotes G-d as saying: "Can it possibly be that a King sits upon His throne of judgement with the books of Life and Death open before Him, and Israel will be reciting song and Hallel?!" (Rosh HaShanah 32b)

Before we explain the nature of our joy on Sukkot, let us detour for a moment to relate to the centrality of our Sukkot-ending prayers for rain. 

We know that the High Priest, who stands on the most sanctified level of all Israel, enters the holiest spot in the world – the Holy of Holies – only on the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur. There and then he recites a prayer, designed specifically to be short so as not to worry the congregation fearfully waiting to hear that he has successfully performed the atonement service. We can be sure that much thought went into the formulation of this prayer, so that of all requests, the most important one is included in this once-a-year opportunity. In fact, the body of the prayer is this: "May this year coming upon us and upon Your nation of Israel wherever they are, be dewy and rainy if hot, and let not the prayers of travelers [who do not want rain] be heard when the world needs rain, and let not Your nation be dependent upon each other or on another people." Thus, the main aspect of this critical prayers focuses on rain and sustenance.

Nowadays, of course, our dependence on rainfall is not very significant, and our prayers for rain take up accordingly less importance. Our subsistence today is generally one of abundance, and certainly in comparison with previous times when rainfall was often a matter of life and death. 

This raises the question: "With rainfall so critical to our lives, why is there a special day of judgement for rain, given that on Rosh HaShanah, our very lives, so critically related to rainfall, were already judged?" The Ran asks this question on this Mishnah, and his answer is that on Rosh HaShanah we were judged as individuals, whereas the judgements of rain on Sukkot, the wheat crop on Pesach, and the fruits on Shavuot are for the collective.

But this is not as simple as it seems. The Turei Aven asks how is it possible to differentiate between the individuals and the nation, for once the judgements of each individual are determined, their sum total is the judgement of the nation as a whole! Why, then, is a separate day of judgement needed for the nation? He answers that the individuals are judged as to what percentage of the nation's blessing they will each receive, but the amount of the national blessing is determined separately. This appears to have been the Ran's intention as well. 

What we see is that each individual is very highly dependent upon the nation, to the extent that his judgement is barely even his own, but only a proportion of the nation's verdict. 

In any event, we see that the judgement regarding rainfall does not stand on its own, but is rather intrinsically connected to our very lives, and also to the Rosh HaShanah judgement. This is connected to that which the Zohar said, that Hoshana Rabba is a "sealing" of the judgement process that began on Rosh HaShanah and continued with Yom Kippur.

We now return to our question, which if anything is now even stronger: Given the importance of the rainfall judgement on Sukkot, why does the Torah grant these days such an extremely joyful nature?

To understand this, let us quote an insight of the Vilna Gaon regarding a famous Mishnah. The Mishnah paints a very unflattering picture of Israel when it happens to rain on Sukkot, causing us to have to leave our Sukkahs without the ability to fulfill the mitzvah of dwelling there, and says: "It is comparable to a servant who comes to pour a cup for his master, and the master overturns the pitcher in his face." (Sukkah 2,9)

The Vilna Gaon notes that the Mishnah does not say that the servant was engaged in pouring his master a cup of water, but came rather to dilute his master's strong wine, as was customary in those times. The Gaon derives this from the Mishnah's usage of the word limzog, and not "to pour." The point is that the wine symbolizes strict judgement, which the servant wished to dilute by adding some water. However, the master did not allow him to do so. This parallels G-d's gift to us of the Sukkot holiday of joy that can be used to dilute or sweeten the judgement of the previous days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur – but when it rains on Sukkot, G-d is signaling that He will not accept this sweetening of the strict judgement via the mitzvah of Sukkah.

As such, our mission on Sukkot is to seek to bring G-d's love and compassion upon us. We thus see how happiness and judgement come together: The way for us to bring down G-d's love and kindness is precisely via happiness and our expression of love for G-d. Thus, as opposed to the days of judgement when our service is expressed in trembling and fearful prayer, on Sukkot we specifically strengthen ourselves with great joy.

Happy Hoshana Rabba!