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Kosher Sukkah |
Practice
The mitzvah of waving the Four Species
derives from the Torah. In Leviticus, it
states: “And you shall take for
yourselves on the first day [of Sukkot],
the fruit of the beautiful [citron]
tree, tightly bound branches of date
palms, the branch of the braided
[myrtle] tree, and willows of the brook,
and you shall rejoice before the Lord
your God seven days.”[1] During the time
of the Temple in Jerusalem, the waving
ceremony (called na'anu'im – נענועים)
was performed in the Holy Temple on all
seven days of Sukkot, and elsewhere only
on the first day. Following the
destruction of the Temple, Rabbi
Yohanan ben Zakkai ordered that
the Four Species be waved everywhere on
every day of Sukkot (except on Shabbat),
as a memorial to the Temple.
To prepare the species for the mitzvah,
the lulav is first bound together with
the hadass and aravah (this bundle is
also referred to as "the lulav") in the
following manner: One lulav is placed in
the center, two aravah branches are
placed to the left, and three hadass
boughs are placed to the right. (This
order is the same for both righties and
lefties.) The bundle may be bound
with strips from another palm frond, or
be placed in a special holder which is
also woven from palm fronds.
Sephardic Jews place one aravah to the
right of the lulav and the second aravah
to its left, and cover them with the
three hadass boughs—one on the right,
the second on the left, and the third
atop the lulav's spine, leaning slightly
to the right. The bundle is held
together with rings made from strips of
palm fronds. Many Hasidic Ashkenazi Jews
follow this practice as well.
In all cases, all of the species must be
placed in the direction in which they
grew. (For the etrog, this means that
the stem end should be on the bottom and
the blossom end on top; this is the
direction in which the etrog begins to
grow, though as it matures on the tree
it usually hangs in the opposite
direction.) |
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