דברים לא:י - ויצו משה אותם לאמר מקץ שבע שנים במעד שנת השמיטה בחג הסוכות.
There is much confusion about the timing of hakhel. The word meketz means the end (see Rashi on Bereshit 41:1), which means that hakhel should be at the end of seven years, but Sukkot is in the beginning of the year. One answer is the Ibn Ezra's opinion (on 31:9, 15:1 and 9:11) that the word meketz really means the beginning of a time period, and then, according to this idea, hakhel is to be done in the beginning of the shemitta year. A second answer is that Chazal (see Rambam, Laws of Chagiga 3:3) understand that meketz means the end of a time period, its usual meaning, but that hakhel is to be observed in the Sukkot of the eighth year of the shemitta cycle or the first year of the new cycle, when it is no longer shemitta. Rashi (on Devarim 31:10) follows this idea and explains that 31:10 refers to this year as being the time (moed) of shemitta since some laws of shemitta still applied. This approach is difficult since the eighth year is not the shemitta year even if some of the laws of shemitta are still relevant.
A third possibility is that really the year begins in Nisan (Shemot 12:2 and Rabbi Yehoshua, Bavli, Rosh Hashanah 11a, see our discussion, “When is the Jewish New Year?”), and then the holiday of Sukkot in the shemitta year, while not at the end of year, can be considered the end of the seven-year cycle, the language of 31:10, since there are just six months to go in the seven-year or eighty four month cycle.
Why should the hakhel ceremony take place during the festival of Sukkot? Sukkot is a pilgrimage festival, but why is hakhel not on Shavuot or chag ha-Matzot? Abarbanel (1999, pp. 492,493) suggests two reasons why Sukkot is the most propitious time for the hakhel ceremony. One (see also Tigay, 1996, p. 291), is that as Sukkot occurs after the harvest, the people could relax and concentrate on hearing the Torah being read. Abarbanel’s second rationale is that since on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur people re-dedicate themselves to G-d, then people will be more likely take to heart the Torah reading that they would hear during the hakhel ceremony.
A third question is what is the connection between shemitta and hakhel? Maybe there is no connection between hakhel and shemitta, but the shemitta year was a way for the people to mark which year hakhel was to be observed.
Also, why does hakhel only take place once every seven years? A possible answer is that had the ceremony occurred every year it would lose its effect of increasing the people's fear of G-d, 31:12,13 (diminishing marginal utility).
Menachem Kasdan (1969) suggests an appealing reason both for why hakhel is related to Sukkot and to the shemitta year. He notes, as do many (see our discussion on 31:7-23, "Passing the baton from Moshe to Yehoshua"), that based on the Rambam (Laws of Chagiga 3:6) that hakhel is a re-enactment of the giving of the Torah. In addition, he points out that the shemitta year corresponds to the conditions of the people in the desert who received the Torah at Mount Sinai. He writes (p. 79), “Only a nation whose faith permits it to dwell in the unhospitable desert or observe shemitta is worthy of receiving the Torah.” Furthermore, he notes, following the timing of hakhel according to Chazel, that by the holiday of Sukkot in the eighth year of the shemitta cycle after the shemitta year, there were no celebrations of crops being harvested. Thus, he suggests that in Sukkot of that year, the people were again showing their trust in G-d, and this made them worthy of re-receiving the Torah by the law of hakhel.
Kasdan’s idea is interesting and can be slightly varied. Maybe celebrating hakhel during Sukkot of the shemitta year was to have the people be as close as possible to the conditions of the generation that actually heard the Decalogue. The obligation to live in sukkot during the festival of Sukkot is an approximate re-creation of the conditions of the people who lived in the desert, see Vayikra 23:43, and in the shemitta year the people were living off the produce of the land that grew naturally somewhat similar to the mahn that the people lived on during their time in the desert.
Bibliography:
Abravanel (Abarbanel), Yitzhak (1437-1508), 1999, Commentary on Devarim, Jerusalem: Horev Publishing.
Kasdan, Menachem, 1969, Hakhel, Gesher, 4:1, pp. 70-80.
Tigay, Jeffrey H., 1996, The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society.
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