נחמיה, פרק ח׳, פסוק י״ד

Upon returning from exile, the public reading of the Torah exposed the people to laws that had faded from memory. As they listened to the scriptures, the crowd discovered the obligation to live in booths during the festival of the seventh month, a duty that many had either forgotten or never knew existed [ביאור שטיינזלץ].

This sudden rediscovery raises a profound historical and legal question: is it possible that the Israelites completely ignored this practice since the days of Joshua? The answer lies not in a mass abandonment of the commandment, but in the unique legal status of Jerusalem. According to Jewish law, these booths cannot be constructed in a public domain. Because Jerusalem was never formally divided into tribal territories, it contained no privately owned land. As a result, for generations, even during the eras of David and Solomon, pilgrims were legally barred from building their booths within the city limits [מלבי"ם].

A major shift occurred under the leadership of Ezra the Scribe. When the people returned and reconsecrated the land, Ezra’s court established a special legal provision. This new condition explicitly permitted the construction of booths in public areas, including the courtyards of God's house and the city streets. While Joshua could have enacted a similar rule during the initial conquest of the land, he did not. Ezra’s legislation thus allowed the commandment to be properly observed in the streets of Jerusalem for the very first time. This legal move also shows that the reconsecration of the land during Ezra's era was an entirely new sanctification, granting the court the authority to implement unprecedented conditions [מלבי"ם].

Beyond the court's legal innovations, the sages drew practical instructions directly from the text regarding how the festival should be observed. They determined that the exact timing of the holiday does not need to perfectly align with the agricultural harvest season. Furthermore, based on the specific spelling of the word for booths in the original text, they concluded that individuals are not required to construct their own private structures. Instead, the people can fulfill the commandment by dwelling together in a single, shared booth [חומת אנך].