Tonight's holiday - God's greatest cure for the spiritual distancing we might experience:
Sukkot ends tonight, and the Torah refers to the holiday starting tonight somewhat generically, as "Atzeret" (convocation).
Question 1. Why doesn't the Torah give any reason for tonight's holiday?
Question 2. How can there be an 8th day of a 7-day holiday? [Explanation: The Torah explains about the 7 days of the holiday of succot, and then says "and on the eighth (shmini) day..." you will have a (different) holiday (atzeret)" "[u'bayom hashmini, atzeret tihyeh lachem", and the holiday has become known by the two words, separated by a comma, joined into "shmini atzeret".]
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The answer (my speculation) is in a few steps:
A) undertanding the reason for the 40 years in the desert; B) understanding the reason for the sukkot holiday; C) which then is necessary in understanding the reason for "shmini atzeret"
A) The reason for the 40 years in the desert: At the incident of the spies the people did not want to enter the Land nor remain in the desert and instead expressed a preference to return to Egypt. God diagnosed a lack of connection to God due to the effect of hundreds of years of slavery, and prescribed the blessing of 40 years closely accompanied by the "anan Hashem" ("the cloud of glory of God"), enough time for the closeness as manifested by this "cloud" to heal the divide that was so prominently displayed by the spies incident.
B) The reason for the sukkot holiday: The 40-year healing worked! In fact, it worked too well - ironically, as told by Tradition, the Jewish People were reluctant to leave the desert - they were loath to enter the Land since it meant giving up the closeness of the 'anan'!
I believe that this is why God inserted a special energy into time, and awarded the People of Israel 1 week of holiday in the Land, a festival of joy with the presence of God in the succah: God says 'you are so attached ot this closeness, I will give you a week of this, every year" - and so the 'schach' (roof-covering) is designed by God to enable the spiritual presence of the anan to be felt during that week; via the special energy inserted into time, there is this annual opportunity for the succah to engender closeness with God, as consolation prize re-enactment of the desert closeness.
C) As an allegory: Imagine someone says to their spouse "We were so close during our wedding, let's spend a week together annually to celebrate its anniversary".
Then, after that week of celebration ends, one says "let's make a holiday today".
So the other spouse asks "Why? What does it celebrate or commemorate?"
The answer: "For no reason, not 'commemorating' anything,,, I just want to be with you".
That's the shmini atzeret holiday! After the great closeness and joy of togetherness during the week of sukkot, Tradition tells us that God said "I can't leave you", and so there is an additional 1-day holiday - shmini atzeret - the cherry on the top of the closeness during the 1-week sukkot holiday.
Note how especially appropriate it is that the 8th day was added for this reason, given the reason for the initial 7 days of holiday to begin with (the anan gave rise to closeness, the closenss was 'addictive', so leaving it was compensated by the crafting of the holiday of Sukkot, and then leaving the closeness of sukkot when addicted to the closeness it gave rise to, itself gave rise to yet another day added on, with the special energy of closeness recurring annually.
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[Personal note: I had posted this two years ago for this holiday, and 12 or so hours later everything changed, and I even felt sorry I had posted it, as though I had been fooling myself and others. The following year, last year, I could not bring myself to post this again. However today there was some healing......so I feel it is possible to post it again.]
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May we all be able to re-connect to our essence, to feel that indeed our source is the breath/spirit of God, and to welcome God's overcoming of separation between the divine and ourselves via this special holiday's offer of closeness and the joy of divine presence.