Festival Prayers-Succot Kavanot-v’Charot Imo haBrit

“Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise. You alone are God. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship You.

“You are God, the Lord, Who chose (Use as Kavanah in Ata Vichartanu) Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and named him Abraham. You found his heart faithful to You, and you made a covenant with him to give to his descendants the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Jebusites and Girgashites. You have kept your promise because You are righteous.

“You saw the suffering of our ancestors in Egypt; you heard their cry at the Red Sea. You sent signs and wonders against Pharaoh, against all his officials and all the people of his land, for You knew how arrogantly the Egyptians treated them. You made a name for Yourself, which remains to this day. You divided the sea before them, so that they passed through it on dry ground, but You hurled their pursuers into the depths, like a stone into mighty waters (Nehemiah 9:5-11).

This was the conclusion of the first Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Succot of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, a story that began, “All the people came together as one in the square before the Water Gate (Representing Succot). They told Ezra the teacher of the Law to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel.”

This was their final “confession,” of this period. It touches on numerous themes of Succot: The Seventy Nations, for whom we offer Seventy Mussaf Offerings on Succot; and Water as in the Water Gate and the Red Sea, God protecting us as we left Egypt, i.e. the Clouds of Protection.