Hardly Weatherproof While Roofless on Sukkot
The shelter sukkot have to give is temporary,
so that they must be literally ex tempore,
not permanent like residences where we live
the rest of our brief lives. Counterintuitive,
if we believe in permanence, but linked to logic
that is not rational—rather, it is theologic—
our fourth dimension. It’s the limit on the time
that we can last, while through their flimsy roofs Jews climb
towards the past, when God’s most glorious clouds, we say,
protected them within the wilderness till they
could leave the wasteland for a country where they’d find
God gave them less protection. This they didn’t mind,
because they now preferred to be intuitive,
in homes quite permanent, except when they relive
the period in which every Jew within his booth
still understands, counterintuitively, truth.
It’s here that Jews like Qohelet’s kingly author revel,
while seeing though their roofs what’s under heaven: hevel;
more balanced ecologically with nature while
outside the house than when beneath a solid roof,
counterintuively in Qohelet’s style
unprotected, since the world is hardly weatherproof.