My house in Austin (rented out now) backs onto a creek (dry most of the year), with many willows along the banks. The last two years before I moved to NYC I cut willow branches the evening before Hoshana Rabba and brought them to shul at the crack of dawn for the willow-beating ceremony. Here in NYC I have to buy pathetic little bundles for exorbitant prices like everyone else.

After services on Sunday I met some friends for brunch, bringing my four species with me in its case. My gentile friend was interested in the ritual and the implements and I explained that Sukkot is basically a rain dance. In Israel the hot dry summer is supposed to come to an end and the fall/winter rains to start. If they didn't, in ancient times, there would be no fall harvest. The willow grows on the banks of rivers and water is a metaphor for all sorts of theological concepts.

Why beat the willows on the ground until leaves fall off? No one knows. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson collects some historical and contemporary midrash on the subject, but concedes that most of the psychological explanations impose a modern interpretation on what the rabbis probably had in mind. Chabad says:

Serer ha-Roke'ach answers that the reason is that the aravah grows near water, and on Hoshana Rabbah mankind is judged as regards water. . . . There is a custom from the time of the Prophets Chaggai, Zecharyah, and Malachi to take an aravah, recite a special prayer, and then beat it on the ground. . . . It is customary to stay awake all night on Hoshana Rabbah and recite the tikkun service, read from the Book of Deuteronomy, recite the entire Book of Psalms, and thus "unite" the night and the day through study and prayer. Those who are especially careful in observing mitzvot immerse themselves in a mikveh before dawn. Festival clothes are worn, and some have the custom of wearing white clothes as on Yom Kippur, and of lighting the candles which remain from Yom Kippur.

It is also customary to interweave the special melodies from the High Holiday services into the hazan's recitation of the Amidah, marking the true end of Yom Kippur.

Jerusalem's Shiloach Spring: water source for the ancient Water Libation ceremony.

All week some Jewish communities partake of another unmandated water ritual, Simchas Bais HaShoeva, in emulation of the humungous yearly party at the Temple:

Jugglers and juggling are mentioned five time in the Talmud. The earliest juggler mentioned is Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel (circa 10 BCE-70 CE). He was world renowned as a great sage and held the title of head of the Sanhedrin (High Court). . . . During the festival of Succot (Tabernacles) the inhabitants of Jerusalem had the custom of holding a "Simchat Beit HaShoeva," or "Celebration of the water-drawing," referring to the water drawn from a spring on the outskirts of Jerusalem and used in the Temple service. The source of that custom was the scriptural verse, "You shall draw forth water in gladness" (Isaiah 12:3). It was at the celebration that Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel juggled2.

What to do with an etrog when Sukkot ends.

*** Text by Yiddish poet Itzik Fefer.

Out where the grass grows pretty wet,
A well stands lost in thought.
Every night girls come for water
With buckets in their hands.

. . . The moon grows pale, and darker,
Somewhere in the night someone's drumming.
Out where the grass grows pretty wet
A well stands lost in thought.