Mem Moment | Hosha Na: Asking for Help
Sukkot VII / Hoshana Rabbah “The Big ‘Please Save Us’”
Hoshana Rabbah is the seventh and final day of Sukkot. It’s a day filled with prayers for rain and for the year ahead, and traditionally we circle seven times with the lulav and etrog, repeating hosha na – “please, save us.”
The Sefat Emet, a 19th-century Hasidic teacher, points to a verse from Psalms:
“דַּלּוֹתִי וְלִי יְהוֹשִׁיעַ”
Daloti v’li yehoshia.
“I was brought low, and I was saved.”
— Psalm 116:6
He reads this as part of the spiritual work of Hoshana Rabbah: when we know that we are lacking, that we cannot do everything ourselves, we become able to ask for help. We spend Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur doing so much work on ourselves. We take stock and name what we want to do differently. Every year I begin to think… there is so much I can change!
Then comes Hoshana Rabbah to remind us we need community. After all that work, we say hosha na. Help us. We admit that there are things we cannot fix or plan or work our way through on our own. The Sefat Emet suggests that recognizing this isn’t giving up. It might actually be what opens us up to being helped.
This holiday invites us to ask: Where in our lives have we reached the edge of what we can do ourselves? What would it mean to let ourselves honestly say, hosha na?
