Suckoth: Hoshana

This year, I tried to understand something about Hoshanoth, the parade around the synagogue, branches and citron in hand, chanting short, obscure verses. What is it? what is the meaning of the chant?

The Talmud  (Suckah 43b) is certain that people carried a branch and circled the altar, but there is a difference of opinion whether it was the palm ( lulav) or the willow ( arava).  This annual altar  ritual seems  a forerunner of circling the kaaba in Mecca during the Haj pilgrimage.  (the scholars in the Talmud are 3rd century, Islam is founded in the early 7th), more likely, they are  branches from a  more distant and murky common source. The Shulchan Aruch ( Orach Chaim 660) describes the parade  as our custom, but does not specify the chant.  The final line of this chapter 

יש מי שאומר שאין אומרים הושענא בשבת ולא נהגו כן: 3. There is one who says not to say Hoshanot on Shabbat, though our practice is not like that.

implies something that is recited, but the text is not otherwise specified. 

In the Ashkenazic tradition, we have a series of texts that begin with 

לְמַעַנְךָ

For your sake.

After the 26 short chants ( 4 introductory, 22 alphabetical) is a series of  alphabetically arranged similes,mostly historical examples of rescue, of Hoshana. Some of the verses are difficult to understand. The Koren siddur doesn't offer a translation.  I was drawn to a footnote in the Art Scroll machzor for Suckoth which  interprets the line: 

כְּהוֹשַֽׁעְתָּ כַּנָּֽה מְשׁוֹרֶֽרֶת וַיּֽוֹשַׁע. לְגוֹחָֽהּ מְצֻיֶּֽנֶת וַיִּוָּֽשַׁע. כֵּן הוֹשַׁע נָא: Like You saved the base, singing (Exodus 13:40), "and He saved," [when] the One bursting out was indicated as saved, so too please save!

as a comment on the verse (Exodus 13:40): " indicates the deliverance of the Shechinah from the Egyptian exile alongside of Israel. "  Chizkuni comments on this verse: ויושע ה' ביום ההוא, “on that day the Lord delivered;” this verse testifies to G-d’s having kept His promise. I simplified this in my mind to mean that Gd had rescued self. 

Suddenly Hoshana had a new meaning for me. Save us( Hoshana) for your sake, made sense.  The entity that promised salvation has to come through. 

We moved to a new suckah this year.  For decades we sat in a suckah that resembled a bunker.  As a child of holocaust survivors,  it felt appropriate.  Now we have a new deck that covers that area. The deck was disigned to have an easily assembled suckah. The change brought to mind what suckot may have meant for my parents. 

When our family  went to Poland, Eugeniusz Stych described the ingenious cover my father had made. My parents lived buried in a pit by day, to hide from the Nazis and their collaborators. Eugeniusz would bring them food in a pail, as if he were feeding the dogs. The cover of the trench was made of sticks and leaves, and was removed by a pulley system. The cover was schach, suckah covering. For a year, my parents lived in a pit covered with schach. I imagine that seeing the roof of a suckah was a trigger of some terrible memories for my parents.

The suckah is a symbol of Hoshana. The flimsy cover does something, it blocks the sun, but it does not protect from the rain or even a strong wind. The Hoshana comes from a higher source. Sometimes it rains.

Hoshana is a little like insurance. There is an entity to which you can make a claim, but the "guarantor" examines the claim for any violation of the policy and only pays off sometimes. The title of rescuer confers privileges and obligations. Hoshana

These chants emerge from an ancient myst. Their author(s) is the obscure Eleiezer Hakalir. There is no clarity about when he (they) lived. He was a master of neologisms, made up words. The verses are cryptic declarations and may contain meanings that are uncomfortable. Hoshanoth is the most mystical of the services that survive. There is a place for marching in a circle and not understanding what we cannot understand.