Shalosh Regalim, «the three pilgrimages,» is the name given to three Jewish festivals—Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot—during which Jews customarily made a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem to present offerings. After the destruction of the Second Temple, this pilgrimage could obviously no longer continue, and to compensate for this, it was established that, during synagogue services, Torah passages related to the festival in question would be read aloud. Rabbi Yohanan explains in tractate Beitzah (15b:16), commenting on the verse (Numbers 29:35) that says: «On the eighth day you shall celebrate it with a solemn assembly and you shall do no work on that day,» that the aim was for the Jewish people to celebrate the festivals as a community while serving the Creator with offerings.

Rabbi Daniel Kohn tells us: “Pilgrimage festivals created an opportunity for the Jewish people to reaffirm their communal commitment to the covenant with God, strengthen the nation’s self-identification as a religious community, and reinforce the sanctity of Jerusalem and the Temple’s place in people’s religious consciousness. In essence, these festivals were an experience to reaffirm a sense of community. Some scholars argue that this requirement to travel to Jerusalem and remain there for the entire holiday was strongly supported by the local Jewish community in biblical Jerusalem, which benefited from visits from pilgrims seeking food, lodging, and sacrificial animals.”

Kohn continues: “Historical texts and archaeological evidence indicate that, in late antiquity, during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, pilgrimage festivals were a deeply significant social and religious institution, bringing Jews from all over the ancient world, from the Mediterranean to Jerusalem.”

What motivated Jews to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem? An infinite number of reasons, which, to better understand them, we can group into three categories. In the first category, principles and social structure, we have, for example, the motivation to fulfill the divine commandment to go to Jerusalem or to be part of the pilgrim community. In the second, experiences, a category with a long list of reasons, we have, among others, witnessing a moving ceremony, eating festive dishes, dancing and singing, receiving the priests’ blessing, visiting Jerusalem, etc. And in the third category, human relationships, the main reason was to spend time together and reconnect with family and friends.

Nowadays, many centuries after the era of the Shalosh Regalim, being part of community life has practically the same motivations as it did back then. Perhaps because humanity, strictly speaking, hasn’t changed much. In ancient times, all three pilgrimages had one place as their destination: Jerusalem. Today, what every community aspires to is a symbolic «Jerusalem,» where each of its members finds their own reason for belonging. This «pilgrimage» to that «Jerusalem» reaches its goal along a three-lane road, three paths that strengthen the sense of community: one is the structure that gives body and form to the group; another is the experiences and activities that move it every day; and the third is the relationships among the people who comprise it and that make it unique. Shalosh Regalim was an experience that, in three ways, reaffirmed the sense of community of the Judaism of its time.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Rabbi Daniel Kohn, «What are Pilgrimage Festivals?» and other sources.