Why is Sukkot right after Yom Kippur?

By Rabbi Alex Freedman.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach.

I used to compare the High Holidays to the Super Bowl, as many others do. After all, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are certainly the days with the biggest shul attendance, highest spiritual significance, and largest amount of preparation. Likewise, the Super Bowl is the football game with the biggest audience, the most at stake, and is the culmination of a long process. But I stopped using this analogy when I realized it has a fatal flaw. Whereas the Super Bowl marks the end of the football season, we in synagogue are just getting started. Only five days after Yom Kippur and it’s Sukkot! Not only are the spiritual stakes high again, but this holiday requires a lot of handiwork, as we must build a Sukkah only a few days after Yom Kippur. There are lots more prayers to sing and, oh yeah, this one lasts a full week. 

Perhaps you feel similar and wonder: exactly why must Sukkot be now? We just got through Yom Kippur! Can’t we take a breather first? Furthermore, the Torah says the reason we live in a Sukkah is to remember how G-d made the Israelites dwell in booths in the desert after Egypt. Why must that annual recollection be now? After all, in the desert, that was a year-long experience, and we could recreate that today in any non-winter month!

First, perhaps the simplest reason: Sukkot not only commemorates G-d’s protection of the Israelites in the wilderness, but the ingathering of the annual harvest. Farmers’ crops would grow through the spring and summer and be gathered after the growing season ended – right about now. The season when farmers amassed all this bounty was a logical time to thank G-d for the blessings of nature and of providing sustenance. That’s the agricultural calendar at work. And the spiritual calendar tells us the fall harvest is the time of Yom Kippur. So this explanation suggests the two holidays are connected by seasons, not themes. 

But my second answer ties directly to the theme of Yom Kippur. Let me quote Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein of 19th century Lithuania, the Aruch HaShulchan: 

“It’s because G-d desires to demonstrate that even though we are sinners, nevertheless G-d doesn’t remove His providence from upon us. Following Yom Kippur [in the desert], G-d instructed [the Israelites] to make the Mishkan (Tabernacle), so His presence could dwell among them….and G-d did not remove the Clouds of Glory (Sukkah). So too G-d showed us, through this Mitzvah, this same model for all time. G-d forgives our sins on Yom Kippur when we do Teshuvah. Here’s a sign [of that forgiveness]: Immediately after Yom Kippur we are commanded to make a Sukkah in order to dwell in G-d’s shade…This shows us that despite all our sins, G-d loves us and protects us from all harm. G-d brings us under G-d’s holy and pure shade and protects us from above, (represented by the Schach).” 

Yom Kippur is about G-d’s forgiveness, and that is something we know in our heads. But we don’t see it with our eyes. This rabbi suggests that Sukkot is a visual expression of Yom Kippur’s forgiveness, that G-d wants to keep us safe and wants us to know it too. Just as G-d’s Clouds of Glory kept the Israelites safe in the dangerous desert, so too in the Sukkah we see the Schach overhead and should be visually reminded that G-d continues to protect us now. I like this explanation because it ties together the two holidays with a shared theme of forgiveness. Yom Kippur is the declaration of G-d forgiving us, while Sukkot is the expression of G-d forgiving us and wanting to be close to us again.

Sukkot isn’t just about the What and the Why. It’s also about the When.