Audio Summaries of the daily Chumash portions In loving memory of Ousher Zelig ben Myer HaLevi Z”L

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Sukkos and Shmini Atzeres

Today's Chumash details the holidays of Sukkos and Shmini Atzeres. It follows the same general pattern of the amounts for meal offerings + supplementary sin offering + maintenance of regular daily communal offering as holidays listed in yesterday's post. See the beginning of that one for reference.

Sukkos

The 15th day of the 7th month (i.e. Nissan) there should be a holiday with no work lasting for seven days.

On each day of this holiday, an Olah offering should be sacrificed, consisting of: 2 rams, 14 male unblemished lambs under the age of one + a number of bulls decreasing by one per day. A total of 70 bulls are offered in this holiday corresponding to the 70 nations (who came from Noach's 70 descendants - see Breishis Chapter 10). The number of offered bulls decreasing from day to day is a sign that these nations will be annihilated however in the times of the Beis Hamikdash these bulls protected these nations from being punished.

We learn from this descent of bulls per day the etiquette of hosting a lodger that on the first day he should feed him poultry, the following day fish, the next day meat (in the place and times that this was written, meat was less expensive than poultry or fish), the next day legumes and then the next day vegetables.

The lambs correspond to the Israelites, who are called "a scattered lamb" *Yermiyahu 50:17). There are 98 lambs offered in total on this holiday, corresponding to the eradication of the 98 curses detailed in Devarim.

So the first day they are to offer 13 bulls, the second day 12, the third day 11 etc..

And then on the eighth day, it should also be a holiday of no work*, and the Olah to be offered then is to consist of: 1 bull, 1 ram and 7 unblemished male lambs in their first year.

*Side note: Another way to understand the idea of "restraining" which is how this is written there, is that they should "restrain" themselves from leaving Jerusalem and are to spend the night there that holiday.

Shmini Atzeres (i.e. this 8th day) was G-d's way of asking them to make a small holiday for Him before they left after Sukkos like a father not wanting to see his son leave or a king to his subjects. The one bull and one ram both correspond to Israel.

Any vows or free will offerings which were pledged during the year can be offered during the festival to make it easy on him so he doesn't have to come to Jerusalem another time just for that.

Moshe related all of this to the Israelites.