Upcoming Mo’edim are listed below. A Mo’ed (Mo’edim is plural) is an “Appointed Time” defined in VaYikra (Leviticus) 23. Each Mo’ed is to be a Mikra Kodesh or “Set-apart calling out” which can also be translated as a Holy- Convocation, Assembly, or Rehearsal that we are called to observe. Therefore these Mo’edim are sacred REHEARSALS appointed by Elohim for what is to come! Are you ready?

Sukkot

Begins Friday evening of October 2nd with the Sukkot 1st day assembly on Shabbat, Oct 3rd at 1 PM. Get your Lulav (See Leviticus 23:40) and bring it with you on Oct 3rd. The last night in booths or Sukka’s is Thursday, October 8th. Sukkot is the plural of Sukka (meaning “booth” or temporary dwelling). You may have heard this Mo’ed referred to as the Feast of Tabernacles. It is a Khag or “Pilgrim Feast” (one of three commanded) where the men are commanded to travel to the place where Elohim would choose. Historically this was the Temple in Jerusalem. See VaYikra (Leviticus) 23:33-36, 39-43 and D’varim (Deut) 16:13-17.

Sh’mini Atzeret & Simkhat Torah

Shabbat October 10th is Sh’mini Atzerat or the “Eighth Day of Assembly” following Sukkot as specified in VaYikra (Leviticus) 23:39. This is typically celebrated together with a traditional Jewish holiday known as Simkhat Torah or “Rejoicing in the Torah!” to commemorate the end of the yearly cycle of Torah readings or Parashot. We will roll out the complete Torah Scroll for all to see and REJOICE with much song and dance!

Why are our feast days, which are commanded in the Tanakh as Mo’edim or “Appointed Times,” oftentimes different from mainstream Judaism and many other Messianic congregations?

Answer: The short answer is, “We are not Rabbinic”. We do not follow the teachings of the Rabbis simply because they are Jewish, as the Rabbis were shown by Messiah to have erred from the Commandments. Our “Judaism” is 1st century, Messianic, “Mishnaic” Judaism, meaning the customs we follow were practiced by Messiah Yeshua and the Shlikhim [Apostles], and recorded in the 2nd century in what is known as “Mishnah,” confirming and explaining the ‘how’ of what is written in Torah. The Mishnah tells us they “observed”/”saw” the “khodesh”, the crescent new moon. This aligns with Torah. The current, Jewish schedule of holy days follows a calculated solar/lunar calendar which was not completely codified until nearly 1000AD, and uses Babylonian methods of setting feast days, having been first calculated by Hillel the 2nd in the sixth century AD. The Torah has no real concept of a fixed “month”, but counts each “khodesh”, or “renewed crescent moon”.

The start of the Mo’edim, or feasts, is set in the spring at Pesakh, each new crescent moon determining the benchmark for setting the following feasts. Pesakh is 14 days after the first crescent, and Yom Teru’ah/Rosh HaShanah falls on the 7th renewed crescent moon. For details on determining Pesakh and the subsequent feasts, please read this document: Reckoning Pesakh