Sukkot- The Jewish Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is over and it's almost time to return to college and homework. I'm just waiting for my flight and I decided I might as well do a blog post. Since Thanksgiving is so recent and my civilization I decided to look at some Jewish thanksgiving holidays. I found Sukkot, an agricultural thanksgiving holiday.


Sukkot is agricultural in origin. This is evident from the biblical name "The Feast of Ingathering," from the ceremonies accompanying it, from the season – "The festival of the seventh month"– and occasion of its celebration: "At the end of the year when you gather in your labors out of the field" (Ex. 23:16); "after you have gathered in from your threshing-floor and from your winepress" (Deut. 16:13). It was a thanksgiving for the fruit harvest. Coming as it did at the completion of the harvest, Sukkot was regarded as a general thanksgiving for the bounty of nature in the year that had passed.

It is interesting how similar the Jews celebrate this holdiay compared to us. Originally the Jews had feasts and special prayers given. In modern times, they do this on top of parades and other modern ways of celebrating such as fireworks.

Longevity of the Torah

How do we know that the Torah we have today is the same text given on Mount Sinai?
The Torah was originally dictated from God to Moses, letter for letter. From there, the Midrash (Devarim Rabba 9:4) tells us:

Before his death, Moses wrote 13 Torah Scrolls. Twelve of these were distributed to each of the 12 Tribes. The 13th was placed in the Ark of the Covenant (with the Tablets). If anyone would come and attempt to rewrite or falsify the Torah, the one in the Ark would “testify” against him. (Likewise, if he had access to the scroll in the Ark and tried to falsify it, the distributed copies would “testify” against him.)