On the Feast of Sukkot, the Torah commands Israel to offer seventy bullocks across the seven days (Numbers 29:12–36). Rabbi Eliezer asked the obvious question in Sukkah 55b: seventy? For whom?
The answer opened the festival wider than anyone expected. "They were offered for the seventy nations of the world," Rashi explains — the traditional count of the Gentile peoples descended from Noah's sons. Every one of those nations had a share in that altar. On Sukkot, judgment is pronounced over the coming rains, and the rain falls on every field in the world, not only Israel's. So Israel stood in the Temple courtyard and slaughtered seventy bullocks, one for each nation, so that the rain clouds would not pass them by.
Then Eliezer finishes his teaching with a sigh that runs through the centuries. "Woe to the Gentile nations for their loss — and they do not even know what they lost! As long as the Temple stood, the altar made atonement for them. Now that the Temple is destroyed, who atones for them?"
Israel's Temple was never only for Israel. Its smoke rose for the whole world, and when it fell, the whole world felt colder — most of it without knowing why.