10. The Feast of Weeks or Festival of the First Fruits in Biblical times was merely a farmer's holiday at the end of [pg 463] the seven weeks of harvest. At the beginning of the harvest parched grains of barley were offered, while at its end two loaves of the new wheat flour were brought as a thank-offering for the new crop.[1485] Rabbinical Judaism, however, transformed it into a historical feast by making it the memorial day of the giving of the Ten Words on Mount Sinai. It was thus given a universal significance, as the Midrash has it, “turning the Feast of the First Fruits into a festival commemorating the ripening of the first fruits of the spiritual harvest for the people of the covenant.”[1486] Henceforth the Ten Words were to be solemnly read to the congregation on that day, and the pledge of loyalty made by the fathers thereby renewed each year by Israel's faithful sons. The leaders of Reform Judaism surrounded the day with new charm by the introduction of the confirmation ceremony,[1487] thus rendering it a feast of consecration of the Jewish youth to the ancient covenant, of yearly renewal of loyalty by the rising generation to the ancestral faith.
11. The main festival in Biblical times was the Feast of Sukkoth, or Tabernacles, the great harvest festival of autumn, when the people flocked to the central sanctuary in solemn procession, carrying palms and other plants. Hence this was called the Hag or Pilgrimage Feast.[1488] In the post-exilic Priestly Code this festival also was made historical, and the name Feast of Sukkoth (which denoted originally Feast of Pilgrimage Tents) was connected with the exodus from Egypt, when the town of Sukkoth (possibly named from the tents of their encampment) was made the rallying point of the fugitive Hebrews at their departure from Egypt. The commentators no longer understood this connection, and traced [pg 464] the name to the tents erected by the people in their wanderings through the wilderness.[1489] It seems that from very ancient times popular rites were performed at this feast, which took a specially solemn form in the holding of a procession from the pool of Shiloah at the foot of the Temple mount to the altar in the Temple, to offer there a libation of water, which was a sort of symbolic prayer for rain for the opening year. Obviously, it is this feast which is referred to in the last chapter of Zechariah, while this outburst of popular joy found a deep response among the pious leaders of the people and is echoed in the liturgy of the medieval Synagogue.[1490] The Halakic rules concerning the tabernacle and the four plans for it tended to obscure the real significance of the festival;[1491] yet in the synagogue and the home it retained its original character as a “season of gladness.” The joyous gratitude to God for His protection of Israel during the forty years of wanderings through the wilderness expanded into thanksgiving for His guidance throughout the forty centuries of Israel's pilgrimage through all lands and ages. This joy culminated on the last day in the Feast of Rejoicing in the Law, when the annual cycle of readings from the Pentateuch was completed in the Synagogue amid overflowing pride in the possession of God's law by Israel.[1492] The rabbis gave Sukkoth a universal significance by taking the seventy bullocks prescribed for the seven days as offerings for the salvation of the seventy nations of the world, while the one bullock offered on the last day suggested the uniqueness of Israel as God's peculiar people.[1493]
12. The highest point of religious devotion in the synagogue is reached on the New Year's day and the Day of Atonement preceding the Feast of Sukkoth. These are first mentioned in the Priestly Code and were undoubtedly instituted after the time of Ezra;[1494] they were then brought into closer connection by the Pharisees and permeated with lofty ideas which struck the deepest chords of the human heart and voiced the sublimest truths of religion for all time to come.
The New Year's Day on the first of Tishri appears in the Mosaic Code simply as the memorial “Day of the Blowing of the Trumpet,” because of the increased number of trumpet blasts to usher in the seventh or Sabbatical month with its great pilgrim feast. Under Babylonian influence, however, it received a new name and meaning. The Babylonian New Year was looked upon as a heavenly day of destiny when the fates of all beings on earth and in heaven were foretold for the whole year from the tables of destiny. The leaders of Jewish thought also adopted the first day of the holy month of Tishri as a day of divine judgment, when God allots to each man his destiny for the year according to his record of good and evil deeds in the book of life.[1495] Accordingly, the stirring notes of the Shofar were to strike the hearts of the people with fear, that they might repent of their sins and improve their ways during the new year. As fixed by tradition, the liturgy contained three blasts of the Shofar to proclaim three great ideas of Judaism:[1496] the recognition of God as King of the world; as Judge, remembering the actions and thoughts of men and nations for their reward and punishment; and as the Ruler of history, who revealed Himself to Israel in the trumpet-blasts of Sinai and will gather all men and [pg 466] nations by the trumpet-blasts of the Judgment Day at the end of time.
The main purpose of the New Year was to render it a day of renewal of the heart, so that man might put himself in harmony with the great Judge on high and receive life anew from His hand, while he fills his spirit with new and better resolves for the future. Judaism does not place the day of judgment after death, when repentance is beyond reach and the sinner can only await damnation, as is done by Christianity after the apocalyptic views adopted from the Parsees. The Jewish judgment day occurs at the beginning of every year, a day of self-examination and improvement of men before God. On this day—in the orthodox Synagogue on the second day of the New Year—the chapter is read from the Torah describing Abraham's great act of faith on Mount Moriah, the heroic pattern of Jewish martyrdom, and stirring prayers, litanies, and songs prepare the worshiper for the “great day” of the year, the Day of Atonement, which is to come on the tenth day of Tishri, the last of the ten Days of Repentance.
13. The Day of Atonement figures in the Mosaic Code as the day when the high priest in the Temple performed the important function of expiation for the sanctuary, the priesthood, and the people. The mass of the people were to observe the day from evening to evening as a Sabbath and a fast day to obtain pardon for their sins before God.[1497] A very primitive rite which survived for this day was the selection of two goats, one of which was to be sent to Azazel, the demon of the wilderness, to bear away the sins of the people, while the other was to be offered to the Lord as a sacrifice. We learn from the Mishnaic sources that the sending forth of the scapegoat was accompanied by strange practices betraying intense popular interest, and its arrival at the bottom of the wild ravine, [pg 467] where Azazel was supposed to dwell, was announced by signals from station to station, until they reached the Temple mount, and the news of it was then received with wild bursts of joy by the people. The young men and maidens assembled on the heights of Jerusalem, like the men at the pilgrimage feast at Shiloh, and held, as it were, nuptial dances.[1498] The day was one of communion with God for the high-priest alone; he confessed his sins and those of the people and implored forgiveness, and it was actually believed that he beheld the Majesty of God on that day when he entered the Holy of Holies with the incense shrouding his face.[1499]
In contrast to this priestly monopoly of service with its external and archaic forms of expiation, the founders of the Synagogue invested the Day of Atonement with a higher meaning in accord with the spirit of the prophets of old, the doctrine of God's mercy and paternal love. Atonement could no longer be obtained by the priest with the sacrificial blood, the incense, or the scapegoat; it must come through the repentance of the sinner, leading him back from the path of error to the way of God. As the high-priest in the Temple, so now every son of Israel was to spend the day in the house of prayer, confessing his sins before God with a contrite heart, awaiting with awe the realization of God's promise to Moses: “I have pardoned according to thy word.”[1500] Indeed, a forward step in the history of religion is represented in the interpretation of the verse: “For on this day he—that is, the high-priest—shall make atonement for you to cleanse you,” which was now understood to refer to God: “He shall make atonement for you through this day.”[1501] Therefore R. Akiba [pg 468] could exclaim proudly, as he thought of the Paulinian doctrine of vicarious atonement: “Happy are ye Israelites! Before whom do you cleanse yourselves from sin, and who cleanses you? Your Father in heaven!”[1502] No mediator was needed between man and his heavenly Father from the moment that each individual learned to approach God in true humility on the Day of Atonement, imploring His pardon for sin and promising to amend his ways. With profound intuition the rabbis attributed God's pardon to the petition of Moses, saying that He revealed Himself in His attribute of mercy on the very tenth of Tishri, foreshadowing for all time the divine forgiveness of sin on the Day of Atonement.[1503]
As the Mishnah expressly states, even the Day of Atonement cannot bring forgiveness so long as injustice cleaves to one's hand or evil speech to the lips and no attempt is made to repair the injury and appease one's fellow-man.[1504] Where justice is lacking, divine love cannot exert its saving power. God's mercy and long-suffering cannot remove sin, unless the root of evil is removed from the heart and every wrong redressed in sincere repentance. The spirit of God is invoked on these great days at the year's commencement only that the penitent soul may thus receive strength to improve its ways, that good conduct in the future may atone for the errors of the past. Surely no religion in the world can equal the sublime teachings of the New Year's day and the Day of Atonement, first filling the heart of mortal man with awe before the Judge of the world and then cheering it with the assurance of God's paternal love being ever ready to extend mercy to His repentant children. While the other festivals of the year are specifically Jewish in historic associations [pg 469] and meaning, these two days on the threshold of each new year are universally human, and the chief prayers for this day are of a universal character, appealing to every human heart. Indeed, it is characteristic that both the concluding service for the day, the Neilah, and the Scriptural reading of the Minhah Service, selected from the book of Jonah, tell that God's all-forgiving mercy extends to the non-Jewish world as well as to the Jew.[1505]
14. Altogether, the Synagogue gave to the annual cycle of the Jewish life a beautiful rhythm in its alternation of joy and sorrow, lending a higher solemnity to general experience. All the festivals mentioned above were preceded by a series of Sabbaths to prepare the congregation for the coming of the sad or the joyful season with its historical reminiscences. So the memorial day of the destruction of Jerusalem, the ninth of Ab, had three weeks previously to herald in a day commemorating the siege of Jerusalem, the seventeenth of Tammuz; but it had also seven Sabbath days to follow, which afforded words of consolation and hope of a more glorious future for the mourning nation.[1506] Of course, the brighter days of the present era have greatly modified the lugubrious character of these eventful days of the past, even in those circles where the hope for the restoration of the Jewish nation and Temple is still expressed in prayer. At the same time, the commemoration of the destruction of State and Temple, the great turning-point in the history of the Jew, ought to be given a prominent place in the Reform Synagogue as well, though celebrated in the spirit of progressive Judaism.
The feast of Hanukkah with its lights and song, jubilant with the Maccabean victory in the battle for Israel's faith, still resounds in the Jewish home and the house of God with [pg 470] the prophetic watchword: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.”[1507]