Crash Cards for Shemini Atzeret (5761)

by Marc Mangel

• This holiday is mentioned twice:  in Leviticus 33:36 and in Number 29:35-38

• It is an add on to Sukkoth, which is only 7 days in Exodus.

• The Talmud calls it the ‘winter’ holiday and added the prayer for rain.

• One axis of Jewish spirituality is memory (an idea I heard of from Sheila Weinberg).

• Our holiday sequence is then Yom Kippur — big and public; Sukkoth with the Uspizim and Jewish meditation; Shemini Atzeret, again big and public