Hoshana Rabbah: Delivering Judgment and Night of the Dead

According to the Mishnah, four instances of judgment take place throughout the year: Passover for crops, Shavuot for fruit, Rosh Hashanah for humanity, and Sukkot for the year’s rainfall.^[1] While not stated in the Torah, already in the Second Temple and rabbinic periods, Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh and final day of Sukkot—never mentioned in the Bible—served as the culmination of rainmaking rituals. ^[2]

The day’s most recognizable observances, first described in the Mishnah (Sukkot 4:5),^[3] are seven circuits around the Torah carrying a lulav and etrog, the Hoshanot (“Save Us”) prayers, and the beating of the willows, all in the service of making sure that God is listening and remembers/decides to bring rain.^[4] Being judged “for water” is a life-and-death kind of divine judgment, since rainfall was inextricably tied to adequate food supply.

While the Mishnah has four disconnected judgment days, the Talmud Yerushalmi connects Rosh Hashanah and Hoshana Rabbah as specific days when God is beseeched:

^{ירושלמי ראש השנה ד:ח} אָמַר רִבִּי יוֹנָה: "כְּתִיב 'וְאוֹתִי יוֹם יוֹם יִדְרוֹשׁוּן.' זוֹ תְקִיעָה וַעֲרָבָה."

^{j. Rosh Hashanah 4:8} Rabbi Jonah said: “It is written (Isa 58:2), ‘To be sure, they seek Me daily (lit. day day)”—this refers to [the day of] shofar blasts [Rosh Hashanah] and [the day of] willows [Hoshana Rabbah].”

The midrash here interprets the phrase יום יום not as “daily” but as referring to the two specific days that bookend the season of judgment, beginning on Rosh Hashanah and ending on Hoshana Rabbah.

By the medieval period, Hoshana Rabbah as final day of judgment appears to have been well-known. Thus, the Sefer ha-Manhig, a compendium of liturgical and religious customs compiled around 1205 by R. Abraham of Lunel, states:

^{ספר המנהיג הלכות סוכה [מוסד הרב קוק]} כי בהושענא רבה מקויימת חתימת ג' הספרים הפתוחים לפני הקדוש ברוך הוא ונחתמים ביום הכיפורים, ובהושענא רבה תכלית הכפרה בשכבר התענינו מערב ר[אש] ה[שנה] עד יום הכיפורי[ם] ונמחלו העונות והזדונות והפשעי[ם].

^{Sefer HaManhig Laws of Sukkah} For on Hoshana Rabbah, the sealing of the three open books takes place before the Blessed Holy One.^[5] For the sealing takes place on Yom Kippur. But Hoshana Rabbah is the culmination of atonement, in that we have already afflicted ourselves from the evening before Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur and our sins, iniquities, and wrongdoings have been forgiven.

To put it in modern terms, names and fates are written on Rosh Hashanah, stamped on Yom Kippur, but neither opened nor mailed until Hoshana Rabbah: that’s the interstitial time where the punishments can (maybe) be altered, while they’re waiting in a divine USPS box. Once they’re stamped, bar-coded, etc, they’re out. Taking this further, the Sefer Chasidim (The Book of the Pious)—a 12^th/13^th century compendium that was the main product of a pietistic movement in the Rhineland called the Chasidei Ashkenaz ^[6] —imagines the sealing taking place not on Yom Kippur but on Hoshana Rabbah:

^{ספר חסידים [פארמא] §תתתשמד} בליל הושענא רבה חותמין, ולכך נקרא (שמות כג:טז) "בצאת השנה".

^{Sefer Chasidim §1544} On the eve of Hoshana Rabbah, [the books] are sealed. That is why it is called (Exod 23:16) “when the year ends.”

The Sefer Chasidim further claims that Hoshana Rabbah is the night that the souls of the dead come out to pray on behalf of the living:

^{ספר חסידים [פארמא] §תתתשמג} ...ויש לילה שהנשמות יוצאות מן הקברות כגון בליל הושענא רבה יוצאות כשהלבנה יוצאת יוצאות ומתפללות.

^{Sefer Chasidim §1543} There is a night when the souls leave their graves, such as the night of Hoshana Rabbah. They exit [their graves] when the moon appears. They go out and pray.^[7]

On this one night of the year, the cemetery becomes a synagogue—inhabited by the spirits of the dead. But doorless and windowless, unbounded by walls, the ghostly synagogue is vulnerable to visitors from the other side of that thin veil separating the living and the dead, as the story that follows reveals.

Sefer Chasidim: The Praying Dead and the Unclad Virgin Ghost

That story begins with two men who hide in the cemetery on purpose to overhear what the dead are saying:

^{ספר חסידים [פארמא] §תתתשמג} וכבר יצאו שנים והחביאו עצמם במקום אחד בבית הקברות ושמעו שאחת אומרת לחבירתה: "נצא ונתפלל יחדיו."

^{Sefer Chasidim §1543} And two [of the living] went out and hid themselves in one place in the cemetery. And they heard that one [soul] was saying to her companion, “Let us go out and pray together.”

Apparently, it was well known that the dead come out on Hoshana Rabbah, only no one had yet had the courage or curiosity to investigate the particulars until these two men. It turns out that the prayers of the dead are benevolent, almost magnanimous:

ויצאו כל הנשמות והתפללו ובקשו רחמים שלא יגזור מיתה על החיים גם אותם שימותו שישובו מדרכם הרעה ובחולי קל, ועל כל ענין של חיים ושל מתים, ועל עצמם למהר לסור דין מעליהם ועל אחרים. והגידו לקהלם.

And all the souls went out and prayed and requested mercy that death not be decreed on the living; also that those who are to die should return in repentance from their evil ways, and regarding [punishments consisting of] moderate illnesses, and about every matter relating to the living and the dead, and, regarding themselves, that punishment be removed quickly from upon them and other [dead ones].^[8] And they [the two living men] told their community [what they had witnessed].

The next scene takes place the following year on the same date, during which different men, ostensibly hoping to witness the same event, hide in the cemetery, but this time only a naked young maiden appears:

לשנה אחרת בליל הושענא רבה הלכו שנים אחרים ויצאה מן הקברים רק בתולה אחת שמתה קודם שבת. אמרו: "תצאי." אמרה: "איני יכולה מפני כי אבי היה עשיר וירד מנכסיו" וקברה בלא בגד.

The following year, on the night of Hoshana Rabbah, two others [from among the living] went [and slept in the cemetery]. And only one young girl, who had died before the sabbath, emerged from the graves. They [the other dead in the cemetery] said [to her], ‘Go out [and pray].’ She said, ‘I am not able to, because my father was rich and he lost his wealth’, and [so] he had buried her without any clothes.

They also hear that the souls will not come out this year, because they don’t like being watched:

ושמעו שמקצת מן הנשמות אמרו "לא ניקבץ יחדיו כי כבר שנים גילו עלינו לרבים, אלא כל אחד ואחד יתפלל בקברו שלא ישמעו החיים."

And they [the two living men] heard that some of the souls said, ‘We will not gather together [for prayer], because two [from among the living] have already revealed [things] about us to the public. Instead, let each one pray separately in his grave, so that the living shall not hear.’

The men then inform the community about the plight of the maiden and, though not entirely clear, it seems they exhume her body and rebury her in proper burial garments:

והגידו לעם וכעסו על אב ולקחו בגדים והלבישו לאותה בתולה.

And they [the two living men] told the community. And they [the members of the community] got angry at the father, and they took clothing, and dressed that young girl.^[9]

If modern, secular understanding sees the separation between the living and the dead as a brick wall, the Sefer Chasidim sees it as a thin veil: barely there, and imperceptible under the right light. In the world of its tales, the dead feel as the living feel and do as the living do. They appear in contexts ranging from spirits complaining about their next-grave neighbors, to hypothetical situations involving the “saving” of a corpse from a burning house. While some engage in wreaking vengeance on still-living enemies, the dead occasionally visit the living in dreams: they know things that the living do not and warn of bad things to come. On Hoshana Rabbah, the dead are magnanimous, and, in this story, the living follow suit.

Rosh Hashanah and the Dead: A Talmudic Story

As Susan Weissman, Chair of Judaic Studies and Associate Professor at Lander College for Women, notes, the story of the men witnessing the proceedings of the dead and learning about the plight of a deceased maiden goes back to a story in the Babylonian Talmud.

A man gets into a fight with his wife on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. He decides to sleep in a nearby cemetery, where he overhears two spirits of deceased young women talking:^[10]

^{בבלי ברכות יח:} מעשה בחסיד אחד שנתן דינר לעני בערב ר[אש] ה[שנה] בשני בצורת והקניטתו אשתו והלך ולן בבית הקברות ושמע שתי רוחות שמספרות זו לזו.

^{b. Berakhot 18b} It is related that a certain pious man gave a dinar to a poor man on the eve of the New Year in a year of drought, and his wife scolded him, and he went and passed the night in the cemetery, and he heard two spirits conversing with one another.

First the man overhears a discussion of whether they should travel the earth while looking behind the divine curtain to learn what God has planned for the next year:

אמרה חדא לחברתה: "חברתי בואי ונשוט בעולם ונשמע מאחורי הפרגוד מה פורענות בא לעולם." אמרה לה חברתה: "איני יכולה שאני קבורה במחצלת של קנים, אלא לכי את ומה שאת שומעת אמרי לי."

Said one to her companion, “My dear, come and let us wander about the world and let us hear from behind the curtain [which shields the Divine Presence] what suffering is coming to the world.” And her companion said to her, “I am not able to, because I am buried [clothed] in a matting of reeds.^[11] But you go, and what you hear, tell me.”

The man learns that one of the girls was buried naked in a reed matting, ostensibly to save money on burial shrouds. Unlike the men in the Sefer Chasidim story, the pious man will do nothing to rectify the girl’s unfortunate situation. Instead, he will cash in on the information he learns from the travelling spirit later that night, when she returns with a meteorological secret of the upcoming year:

הלכה היא ושטה ובאה ואמרה לה חברתה: "חברתי מה שמעת מאחורי הפרגוד?" אמרה לה: "שמעתי שכל הזורע ברביעה ראשונה ברד מלקה אותו." הלך הוא וזרע ברביעה שניה. של כל העולם כולו לקה, שלו לא לקה.

She went and wandered about and returned. Said her companion to her, “My dear, what did you hear from behind the curtain?” She replied, “I heard that whoever sows seed at the time of the first rainfall will have his crop smitten by hail.” So the man went and did not sow until the time of the second rainfall, with the result that everyone else’s crop was smitten [by hail] and his was not smitten.

The next year, the man doesn’t wait to be kicked out by his wife, but sleeps in the cemetery again, hoping the ghosts will reveal a secret for the coming year, and he is not disappointed:

לשנה האחרת הלך ולן בבית הקברות ושמע אותן שתי רוחות שמספרות זו עם זו.

The next year, he went and slept in the cemetery and heard the same two spirits talking to each other.

אמרה חדא לחברתה: "בואי ונשוט בעולם ונשמע מאחורי הפרגוד מה פורענות בא לעולם." אמרה לה: "חברתי לא כך אמרתי לך איני יכולה שאני קבורה במחצלת של קנים?! אלא לכי את ומה שאת שומעת בואי ואמרי לי."

One said to her friend: “Let us wander about the world and hear from behind the curtain [which shields the Divine Presence] what suffering is coming to the world.” And her companion said to her, “My dear, did I not tell you that I am not able to, because I am buried in a matting of reeds. But you go, and what you hear, tell me.”

הלכה ושטה ובאה ואמרה לה חברתה: "חברתי, מה שמעת מאחורי הפרגוד?" אמרה לה: "שמעתי שכל הזורע ברביעה שניה שדפון מלקה אותו." הלך וזרע ברביעה ראשונה; של כל העולם כולו נשדף; ושלו לא נשדף.

She went and wandered about and returned and her companion said to her, “My dear, what did you hear from behind the curtain?” She replied, “I heard that whoever sows during the second rains, blight will smite his crops.” He went and sowed during the first rains. All the world’s crops were blighted; his was not blighted.

Two lucky breaks in a row and the man’s wife gets curious, especially since from the beginning of the story, we can see she was not a big believer in his pecuniary acumen:

אמרה לו אשתו: "מפני מה אשתקד של כל העולם כולו לקה ושלך לא לקה? ועכשיו של כל העולם כולו נשדף ושלך לא נשדף?" סח לה כל הדברים הללו.

His wife said to him: “How is it that last year everyone’s crops were smitten and yours were not smitten? And now, everyone’s crops were blighted and yours were not blighted?” He told her the whole story.

Unfortunately for the couple, the wife gives away the secret in the heat of an argument:

אמרו לא היו ימים מועטים עד שנפלה קטטה בין אשתו של אותו חסיד ובין אמה של אותה ריבה. אמרה לה: "לכי ואראך בתך שהיא קבורה במחצלת של קנים!"

It was said that not long after, a fight broke out between the pious man’s wife and the mother of the young [dead] girl. [The wife] said to her: “Go and I will show you your daughter, who is buried in [nothing but] a matting of reeds!”

Somehow, whether because the mother had the girl reburied or because she complained about the insult by the girl’s grave, the ghost now knows that she was overheard, and thus in his third attempt, the pious man gains no secret information:

לשנה האחרת הלך ולן בבית הקברות ושמע אותן רוחות שמספרות זו עם זו.

The next year, he went and slept in the cemetery and heard the same two spirits talking to each other.

אמרה לה: "חברתי, בואי ונשוט בעולם ונשמע מאחורי הפרגוד מה פורענות בא לעולם." אמרה לה: "חברתי הניחני, דברים שביני לבינך כבר נשמעו בין החיים."

Said one to her companion, “My dear, come and let us wander about the world and let us hear from behind the curtain what suffering is coming to the world.” She said to her, “My dear, leave me be. Things we were saying amongst ourselves have already been heard among the living.”

The ghosts, it seems, want to conduct their business without an audience, especially an audience that might grow by word of mouth.

Comparing the Tales

One of the most salient shifts between the Talmudic versions and Sefer Chasidim concerns what the dead are described as doing. While the ghosts in the Talmud want to wander the world and hear the latest suffering planned for humanity, essentially, they seem more curious than concerned, the ghosts in Sefer Chasidim are interested in praying together in the cemetery for the benefit of humanity.

Both stories have a girl who was dressed inappropriately by a parent at their burial. The Talmud’s girl, clothed in the mat of reeds, understandably does not wish to wander around so attired, thus she remains in or near her grave. The story ends with the mother being insulted, but we do not hear anything about the situation being fixed.

The girl in Sefer Chasidim is triply vulnerable: newly dead, a virgin, and buried without shrouds. Because of this, she cannot participate in group prayer. This story ends with the father being pressured by the community to exhume his daughter and rebury her with appropriate burial garments.

The connection between the two elements of the Sefer Chasidim story, the public prayer and the burial of the girl, is unclear. Perhaps the motivation for fetching shrouds was not simply because the girl was attired improperly, but because the prayer of the dead on behalf of the living is aimed at saving the living from harsh, divine judgments. Within this framework, the living help the dead to help the living: prayer and deeds exist as concentric circles, as the deathly congregation grows ever larger.

In addition to these conceptual shifts, it is noteworthy that Sefer Chasidim moves the night of the spirits from Rosh Hashanah to Hoshana Rabbah. Indeed, Hoshana Rabbah is especially significant for humans learning about their judgments, and a final opportunity to fix it.

Checking the Shadows, Losing One’s Head

Following the story of the praying dead and the virgin without burial shrouds, Sefer Chasidim turns to a striking mini-anecdote, intended to both emphasize the pedagogical point and provide an image of behavior that is, indeed, exemplary. The premise of the story is that being unable to see one’s shadow on Hoshana Rabbah night means that the person will die that year:

^{ספר חסידים [פארמא] §תתתשמד} אחד לא ראה בליל הושענא רבה צל ראשו, והתענה הוא ואוהביו הרבה צומות ונתן צדקה הרבה וחי כמה שנים אחר כך, כדכתיב (משלי יא:ד) "וצדקה תציל ממות."

^{Sefer Chasidim §1544} A man did not see his head’s shadow on the evening of Hoshana Rabbah's night, so he and his loved ones afflicted themselves with many fasts and gave much to charity and lived many years after that, for as it is said (Proverbs 10:2), “tzedakah saves from death.”

This story is quite different than the previous one. The man never interacts with or even sees the dead; indeed, it is not even clear where the shadow-checking ritual takes place, though the cemetery might have been a logical choice. In seeing himself headless in the light of the half-moon—the rabbinic Jewish calendar is lunar, so Hoshana Rabbah (21^st of Tishrei) is always during a half-moon—the man interacts with his own impending death.

The Custom of Shadow Checking

The Sefer Chasidim is a relatively early source for the belief that shadow-checking on the night judgment is sealed reveals whether the person has been judged for death. Soon after, it appears as a standard belief among the Sephardic kabbalists. For instance, R. Moses Nachmanides (ca. 1195–ca. 1270), in his gloss on the Joshua and Caleb’s statement that the Israelites can defeat the Canaanites since סָר צִלָּם מֵעֲלֵיהֶם “their shadow has already departed from them,” writes:

^{רמב"ן במדבר יד:ט} יתכן שירמוז הכתוב למה שנודע כי בליל החותם לא יהיה צל לראש האיש אשר ימות בשנה ההיא לכך יאמר כבר סר צלם מעליהם שנגזר עליהם מיתה.

^{Nachmanides Num 14:9} It seems likely that the verse is hinting at what is well known that on the night that of the sealing [of our judgments], no shadow will be found over the head of a person who is [destined] to die that year. That is why it says their shadow has already left them, since their deaths have already been decreed.^[12]

R. Bachya ben Asher (1255–1340) paraphrases Nachmanides, connecting his comment to Hoshana Rabbah explicitly:

^{רבינו בחיי במדבר יד:ט} והרמב"ן ז"ל פירש: "סר צלם מעליהם". שהוסר הצל מעל ראשם, ממה שידוע כי בליל החותם הגדול של הושענא רבה, הוא יום כ"ו לבריאת עולם, לא ימצא צל לראש מי שעתיד למות באותה שנה. וזה כאלו אמר: כבר נגזרה עליהם מיתה. זאת כוונתו ואף על פי שאינו לשונו.

^{R. Bachya Num 14:9} The Ramban z”l explained “their shadows have already departed from them” that the their shadows have left their heads, based on what is know that on the night of the great sealing [of judgments] of Hoshana Rabbah, which is the 26 day from the creation of the world [on Rosh Hashanah], no shadow will be found cast by the heads of a person who is destined to die that year. So it is as if it says “their fate to die has already been determined.” This is his meaning if not his exact words.

Divining whether someone will die by checking shadows also appears in the Zohar, though here the date is moved to Shemini Atzeret, the night after Hoshana Rabbah:

^{זוהר ויחי כו} כְּדֵין צוּלְמִין אִתְעֲבָרוּ מִנִּיהּ, וְלָא מִשְׁתַּכְּחִין עִמֵּיהּ. כֵּיוָן דְּמִתְעַבְרָן מִנֵּיהּ, הָא וַדַּאי טוּפְסְקָא דְמַלְכָּא יַעֲבֹר עֲלֵיהּ, וְיִטְעוֹם כַּסָּא דְמוֹתָא. וּבְהַהוּא לֵילְיָא דְּחַגָּא בַּתְרָאָה, סַנְטֵירִין זְמִינִין, וּפִתְקִין נָטְלִין, בָּתַר דְּנַטְלֵי לוֹן, צוּלְמִין מִתְעַבְרָן...

^{Zohar Vayechi 26} Then the shadows are removed from him and no longer found with him. Once they are removed from him, it is certain that the King’s punishment will overtake him and he will taste the cup of death. And on this night of the final festival (Shemini Atzert), the punishing angels are available and they take the notes [upon which the punishments are recorded], and after they take them, the shadows are removed....

David Abudarham (14^th cent.) also quotes Nachmanides, and tries to explain how it is possible, given that if one tests this, one will always find one has a shadow:

^{ספר אבודרהם סוכות} וזה הצל אינו צל האדם ממש כי העומד אצל הלבנה או אצל האורה אי איפשר שלא יהיה לו צל אלא הוא צל הצל הנקרא בדברי רבותי' (בבלי גיטין סו.) "בבואה דבבואה".

^{Sefer Abudarham Sukkot} This shadow is not the actual shadow of the person, since if one stands under the moon or by its light, it is impossible not to have a shadow. Rather, it is the shadow of the shadow, what the rabbis call (b. Gittin 66a) “the shadow’s shadow.”

Earlier in the same paragraph, Abudarham details a custom of people actually checking their shadows:

^{ספר אבודרהם סוכות} ויש אנשים שנוהגין גם בליל הושענא רבא שכורכין עצמם בסדין ויוצאין למקום שמגיע אור הלבנה ופושטין מעליהם הסדין ונשארים ערומים ופושטין איבריהם ואצבעותיהן.

^{Sefer Abudarham Sukkot} There are those whose practice it is to go outside on the night of Hoshana Rabbah, they wrap themselves in a sheet and go to a place where the light of the moon appears, and they remove the sheet and stand naked, and they stretch their arms and fingers.

אם מצא צלו שלם טוב הוא, ואם יחסר צל ראשו בנפשו הוא. ואם יחסר צל אחד מאצבעות ידיו סימן לאחד מקרוביו. ויד ימין סימן לבניו הזכרים, ויד שמאל סימן לנקבות.

If they find their full shadow, that is good, if they are missing a head, that is a mortal judgment. If they are missing the shadow of one of their fingers, it is a sign about a relative: right hand means his male offspring, left hand means female. ^[13]

The man in Sefer Chasidim, therefore, is an outlier: he checks his shadow and finds it headless but instead of just accepting this an inevitable the experience inspires action, even as the seal hovers above the book and the time for repentance is rapidly counting down. To save himself, he chooses one of the three main strategies expressed in Jewish liturgy.

Charity Saves from Death

One of the most famous parts of the High Holiday liturgy, dating from centuries before the Sefer Chasidim, is the Unetaneh Tokef, which states:

ותשובה ותפילה וצדקה מעבירין את רוע הגזירה.

Repentance, prayer, and charity mitigate the harsh decree.^[14]

In the world of Sefer Chasidim, these techniques for mitigation can and should be put to use even after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur have passed, and perhaps especially once they have passed, on Hoshana Rabbah night.

In connecting the actions of the already-dead with those of the living who are actively facing death, Sefer Chasidim widens the stage for people who may have not yet completed their teshuva, tefilla, and tzedakah.

In the first section of Sefer Chasidim’s account of what takes place Hoshana Rabbah night, we read about the prayers of the dead on behalf of the living. In the second section, we see an act of repentance, as a father is forced to fix his daughter’s improper burial. Finally, in the third case, when the man learns he has been judged for death, he saves himself by giving charity. These opportunities have one thing in common: they all take place on the night of Hoshana Rabbah, a porous night when the realms of the dead and living mix, humanity’s last chance to avert the decree.