The Water Libation in the Festival of Booths

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As I write, the fall holiday season is ending in Jerusalem with two simultaneous but contrary activities. The locals are dismantling their sukkot, the booths, or tabernacles, of the Festival of Booths, which for a week stood on balconies and in gardens, where everyone dines and where the more intrepid also sleep. Palm fronds are stacked on pavements to be hauled away. Visiting Diaspora Jews, still in festival finery because they observe an extra day of the holiday,^a stream toward the Liberty Bell Garden where they will dance into the night with Torah scrolls to celebrate the annual completion of the weekly lectionary cycle. The cycle will resume with Genesis immediately after the last portion is read.

Synagogue services during Sukkot have been distinguished by waving palm branches adorned with myrtle, willows and fragrant citrons. In biblical times, however, the main rites occurred in the Temple. Particularly memorable was the water libation, which, surprisingly, is not mandated by Scripture but is described in detail by the rabbis: “The water libation: How so? A golden flagon holding three logs was filled from the pool of Siloam. When they arrived at the Water Gate they sounded a prolonged blast, (and) a quavering note, and a prolonged blast. He (the priest) went up the ramp and turned to his left where there were two silver bowls…And they each had a hole like a narrow spout, one wide and the other narrow, so that both were emptied out together, the one to the west was for water and that to the east, for wine…R. Judah says, with one log they would carry out the libations all eight days.”¹

The rabbis acknowledged that the water libation rite had been performed from earliest times. They had the precedent of Samuel’s emergency water libation, in which he “poured out [water] before the Lord in Mizpeh” as the people confessed their sins (1 Samuel 7:6). They also had the more explicit eschatological statement of the prophet Zechariah: “All who survive of all those nations that came up against Jerusalem shall make a pilgrimage year by year to bow low to the King Lord of Hosts, and to observe the Festival of Booths. Any of the earth’s communities that does not make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to bow low to the King Lord of Hosts shall receive no rain” (Zechariah 14:16–17, emphasis mine).

The streams of “living waters” (Zechariah 14:8) that will flow out of Jerusalem during this eschatological Festival of Booths are reinterpreted by Jesus in his sermon in the Temple during the festival: “On the last day of the festival [the seventh], the great day [when the altar was circumambulated seven times], while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.’ As the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his [Jesus’] belly^b shall flow rivers of living water’ [John 7:37–38].”

There is little doubt that these rites have a magical origin: The setting up of the branches on the altar (see Psalm 118:27), beating of the branches at the altar, circling of the altar, pouring of the water libation on the altar—all accompanied by the blowing of a ram’s horn—can be traced to equivalent magical rites aimed at producing rain. However, the magical origins had been expunged in biblical times,² all the more so in the rabbinic period.

Let us take the instance of the circumambulation of the altar each day and seven times on the seventh day. The parallel of the story of the conquest of Jericho immediately comes to mind. That too involved making a complete circuit of the city for six days and, on the seventh day, marching “around the city seven times” (Joshua 6:3–4, 14–16), accompanied by blasts of the shofar (Joshua 6:4, 8–9, 16, 20). However, the magical circle augmented seven times on the seventh day notwithstanding, the rite was executed at the command of the Lord (Joshua 6:2–5). Similarly, it can be assumed that all the nonbiblical rites of the Festival of Booths, though undoubtedly originating in popular worship and rooted in magical practice, were ultimately assimilated into Israel’s official monotheism, and the rabbis could say with confidence that they were revealed to Moses at Sinai.

Another example of a rite with a magcal origin, which is illuminating in many other respects, is Elijah’s sacrifice on Mt. Carmel in his contest with the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18). Above all, the repeated pouring of water upon the altar (1 Kings 18:34–35) was not to heighten the miracle 055of fire consuming the drenched sacrifice (the usual interpretation), but was the quintessential water libation for rain. The incineration of the sacrifice was therefore only a prelude to the real test: Which God would end the three-year drought (1 Kings 18:1)? It is only after Elijah sends his attendant for the seventh time to search for signs of approaching rain that “a cloud as small as a man’s hand” appears in the western horizon, followed by a torrential rain (1 Kings 18:43–45). Notwithstanding all the uncontestable magical elements in the narrative, the rainmaking is attributed not to Elijah but only to the Lord (1 Kings 18:24, 36–38, 46).³

To convey some impression of the unprescribed, nonsacrificial festivities indulged in by laity and clergy alike during the water libation rites, I conclude with the (probably) eyewitness report recorded in the Mishnah:

“Anyone who has not witnessed the rejoicing at the Water-Drawing Libation has never seen rejoicing in his life. At the close of the first Holyday of the Festival of Booths they went down to the Court of the Women where they had made an important rearrangement. And golden candlesticks were there with four golden bowls at their tops and four ladders to each one, and four youths from the young priests with pitchers of oil, holding a hundred and twenty logs, in their hands, which they used to pour into every bowl. From the worn-out drawers and girdles of the priests they made wicks and set them alight; and there was no courtyard in Jerusalem that was not lit up with the light of the Water-Drawing Libation.

“Pious men and men of good deeds used to dance before them with burning torches in their hands and sang before them songs and praises. [Rabban Simeon ben Gameliel danced with eight flaming torches, and not one of them fell to the ground. Now he would prostrate himself, he would put his finger on the ground, bow low, kiss (the ground), and forthwith straighten up.]⁴ And the Levites on harps, and on lyres, and with cymbals, and with trumpets and with other instruments of music without number upon the fifteen steps leading down from the court of the Israelites to the Women’s Court, corresponding to the Fifteen Songs of Ascent in the Psalms; upon them the Levites used to stand with musical instruments and sing hymns. And two priests stood at the Upper Gate which led down from the Israelites’ Court to the Court of the Women with two trumpets in their hands. At the cock’s crow they sounded a prolonged blast, and a quavering note, and a prolonged blast. When they arrived at the tenth step they sounded a prolonged blast, and a quavering note, and a prolonged blast. When they reached the Forecourt they blew a prolonged blast and a quavering note, and a prolonged blast. They kept up prolonged blasts and proceeded until they reached the gate that lead out to the east; when they arrived at the gate that led forth to the East they turned their faces to the West and said, ‘Our ancestors when they were in this place turned “with their backs unto the Temple and their faces toward the East and they prostrated themselves eastward toward the sun” (Ezekiel 8:16), but as for us, our eyes are turned to the Eternal.’”⁵

The hot, dry summer has ended in Israel. Parched today as in biblical and Temple times, the land thirsts, as dependent as ever on divine grace. Today, on 056the eighth day of the festival, synagogue liturgies all over the world include Geshem, the prayer for Israel’s winter rains. Somehow, post-talmudic rabbis, deprived of direct experience of the land, have forgotten how to choreograph the Water-Drawing Libation. Thankfully, the ecstatic joy of that event, far from being silenced, has migrated ingeniously to dancing with Torah scrolls. Torah, after all, is “living waters.”

As I write, the fall holiday season is ending in Jerusalem with two simultaneous but contrary activities. The locals are dismantling their sukkot, the booths, or tabernacles, of the Festival of Booths, which for a week stood on balconies and in gardens, where everyone dines and where the more intrepid also sleep. Palm fronds are stacked on pavements to be hauled away. Visiting Diaspora Jews, still in festival finery because they observe an extra day of the holiday,a stream toward the Liberty Bell Garden where they will dance into the night with Torah scrolls to celebrate the annual completion […]