Torch Juggling in the Temple: Inside Sukkot's All-Night Water Festival
Every morning of Sukkot in the Second Temple period, a priest carried a golden flask of water from the Pool of Siloam up to the altar — a rain-making ritual that appears nowhere in the five books of Moses. Every night, the Temple courtyard became something closer to a street festival: four giant golden candelabra lighting the entire city, the head of the Sanhedrin juggling eight burning torches, Levites on fifteen stairs, and a crowd that the Talmud insists never slept. This episode traces the full arc of Simchat Beit HaShoeva — the water drawing ceremony — from its scriptural afterthoughts…
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