Many years ago, I was sitting with a friend in a Jerusalem coffee shop during Chol HaMoed, the intermediate days of Sukkot, when a parade passed by. For about an hour we watched, perplexed, as foreigners, proudly Christian, proclaimed their love for Jews, Israel, and Jerusalem. A group of blond Nordic Christians carried a full-size model of the Ark of the Covenant. Their high “priest,” an improbably tall woman with rope-like braids, blew a long shofar while her bejeweled breastplate glittered in the sun. Israelis, equally perplexed, stood and watched as hundreds of Christians waving the flags and banners of dozens of nations marched through the center of town.
That was my first encounter with the Christian delegations of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) marching in the annual Jerusalem March, an event I have watched every year since with growing wonder. Israelis have come to treasure their supporters from afar. Few of us understand how, after 2,000 years of difficult relations, devout Christians have become our most devoted allies at the very moment we need them most.
What brings Christians from the ends of the earth to Jerusalem to celebrate a Jewish festival? For years I had no answer. The Talmud gave me one, in a passage rarely taught to non-Jews because it seems to carry a harsh message for the nations.
The Nations Ask for Their Reward
The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 2a–3b) describes a scene at the End of Days. The Holy One, Blessed be He, brings a Torah scroll, places it in His lap, and announces that whoever occupied himself with it should come and take his reward. The nations crowd forward. Rome, the kingdom of Edom, comes first and claims credit for its markets, bathhouses, silver and gold, all built, it says, so that Israel could study Torah. God answers that everything they built served their own needs. Persia makes a similar case about its bridges and conquered cities and is dismissed the same way. The nations then argue that they were never given the Torah. God points to the seven Noahide laws they accepted and failed to keep, and calls witnesses against them from their own ranks.
Out of arguments, the nations plead: “Master of the Universe, give it to us anew, and we will fulfill it.” God answers: “One who toiled on the eve of Shabbat will eat on Shabbat. One who did not toil on the eve of Shabbat, from where will he eat on Shabbat?” This world is the time for preparation, and the World to Come is the time for reward.
God gives them a chance anyway. “I have an easy mitzvah, and its name is sukkah. Go and perform it.” Each of the nations immediately goes and builds a sukkah on his roof. Then God “brings the sun out of its sheath,” bringing on the blazing heat of tekufat Tammuz, the height of summer, in the middle of the festival. Each one kicks his sukkah and walks away.
An objection is raised. Rava had already ruled that one who suffers in the sukkah is exempt from the mitzvah. The Talmud’s reply is sharp: “Granted they are exempt, but do they have to kick it on their way out?”
The heat did not condemn the nations. Their contempt did. A Jew who leaves a sweltering sukkah goes back inside with regret when the sun sets. The nations kicked theirs over and walked away.
A Warning With an Open Door
The passage reads like a final verdict against the nations. But Jewish law teaches us to read it differently. Prophecies of good and prophecies of disaster work in opposite ways. Maimonides rules that when a prophet foretells calamity and it does not come to pass, he is not a false prophet, because God is “slow to anger and abundant in kindness.” Repentance can cancel a harsh decree, as it did for Nineveh in the days of Jonah. A prophecy of good carries no such flexibility. The Sages taught that every good word God speaks, even conditionally, He never retracts (Berakhot 7a).
The Talmud’s picture of the nations kicking the sukkah is a prophecy of judgment, and a prophecy of judgment is a warning. Like the decree against Nineveh, it leaves the door open for teshuvah (repentance/return) and tikkun (fixing).
The Tikkun
We are living in prophetic times, as Christians return to the Hebrew roots of their faith. I have been blessed to write about Christians discovering Shabbat, “eating Biblically,” and celebrating the Passover Seder. Christians are seeking out Jewish teachers and visiting Israel in growing numbers despite the war. They come looking for the settings of the Bible rather than only the sites the Church designated for them.
The Christian mitzvah that brings me the most joy is watching them gather in Jerusalem for Sukkot. They are performing a tikkun, a spiritual repair of the Talmud’s prophecy. In the Talmud’s vision, the nations kicked the sukkah the moment it became uncomfortable. Every year, a growing number of Christians from every corner of the world endure long flights, high costs, and the fierce Jerusalem sun to embrace the festival of booths, the dwellings of our ancestors in the desert. “Ye shall dwell in booths seven days,” the Bible commands, “that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 23:42–43). The nations of the Talmud rejected the sukkah with contempt. These Christians are returning to it with love, despite the difficulty.
The Feast of the Nations
The Christians streaming into Jerusalem give a glimpse of the Temple era to come, when the seven-day feast will be an international event. During Sukkot, the Bible commands a sacrifice found in no other festival. Each day, the priests offered a descending number of bulls: thirteen on the first day, twelve on the second, and so on down to seven on the seventh day (Numbers 29:12–34). The total comes to exactly seventy. “These seventy bulls, to what do they correspond? To the seventy nations,” taught Rabbi Elazar (Sukkah 55b). The Bible counts seventy nations descended from Noah in Genesis 10, and Jewish tradition regards them as the full family of mankind. For a week each year, Israel stood at the altar in Jerusalem and brought offerings on behalf of the whole world.
Rashi notes that the number of bulls decreases each day, and he reads this as a sign that the nations that reject God and His people will steadily diminish, while Israel endures (Rashi on Numbers 29:18). The nations received atonement through Israel’s service, and their standing depended on their relationship with Israel. After the Temple was destroyed, the Sages mourned what the world had lost. “Woe to the nations, for they lost and do not know what they lost,” said Rabbi Yochanan. “When the Temple stood, the altar atoned for them. Now, who atones for them?” (Sukkah 55b).
The prophets foresaw Sukkot restored as the feast of all nations. King Solomon dedicated the First Temple during this festival, and in his dedication prayer he asked God to answer the foreigner “that is not of Thy people Israel” who comes to pray toward the House (1 Kings 8:41–43). Zechariah saw the day when the festival would belong to the whole world:
“And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles” (Zechariah 14:16).
That is a prophecy of blessing, and God never retracts a blessing. That day is guaranteed. Which nations will be standing in Jerusalem’s sukkah on that day, and which will be kicking theirs over in the heat, is still being decided. Each nation decides by how it stands with Israel now, while the sun is already rising.
Shade From the Sun
The schach, the roof of the sukkah, is made of branches, reeds, or other materials that grew from the ground. It is laid loosely enough to give more shade than sun while leaving the stars visible at night. Sitting beneath it, we are constantly reminded of heaven. The Sages taught that the schach recalls the Clouds of Glory that surrounded Israel in the desert, shielding the nation from the burning sun.
This detail completes the Talmud’s lesson. The nations’ test was the sun, and the schach exists to provide shade from it. The nations fled the heat and kicked away the very covering God designed to shelter them. The sukkah was their refuge, and they treated it as their punishment.
Raising the Fallen Sukkah
The prophet Amos saw the day when the sukkah itself would be restored:
“In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof, and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old” (Amos 9:11).
In Hebrew, the “fallen tabernacle of David” is sukkat David hanofelet, the fallen sukkah of David. The Sages read it as the Messianic restoration of the House of David, and the Talmud calls the Messiah Bar Nafli, “son of the fallen,” after this verse (Sanhedrin 96b). Throughout Sukkot, Jews pray in the Grace After Meals: “May the Merciful One raise up for us the fallen sukkah of David.”
The next verse divides the nations in two:
“That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the nations, upon whom My name is called, saith the LORD that doeth this” (Amos 9:12).
On one side stands the remnant of Edom. On the other stand “all the nations, upon whom My name is called,” the nations that attached themselves to the God of Israel. This is the same division the Talmud describes: the nations who kick the sukkah, and the nations who come to it with love. When David’s sukkah is rebuilt, both will be there, and the difference between them will be clear to everyone.
