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Sarah Tuttle-Singer
A Mermaid in Jerusalem

Making shelter together in the darkness

Image generated with AI by the author

Ill be real with you:

I’m dreading this holiday.

I can’t stop thinking how this was our last holiday before October 7 — the last time we gathered together and welcomed each other and rejoiced in each other’s good company without that aching pall of dread.

We prayed for rains, but not the storm that wiped out our world as we knew it.

I close my eyes and I see images from southern Israel —graphic, brutal. They are seared into my mind.

Streets where children once played, now scorched. Homes reduced to rubble. Families annihilated. And among it all, the Sukkot structures—those fragile huts that are supposed to remind us of shelter and protection—either burned to ash or standing eerily in the middle of the devastation, untouched by the flames but haunted by the horrors surrounding them.

This year, Sukkot feels heavier. It IS heavier. I don’t have a place for a physical Sukkah in my apartment, and for a lot of reasons, it’s been hard to attend meals and gatherings.

There’s a separation I feel—not just from the traditions, but from the joy this holiday usually brings.

Everything feels fragile. It IS fragile.

But as I sit with this, exposed to the elements of my own internal storm, I realize I can still build a Sukkah.

Not outside, not with wood or palm fronds, but inside my heart. A Sukkah made of all the things I carry—memories, grief, love, and that stubborn flicker of hope that refuses to die, even when everything else feels like it’s falling apart. A place to hold it all—the loss and the moments of light that still manage to break through. A place where the captives can visit, too.

And if you’re feeling this raw awfulness, too, you’re not alone. We can share this space, these Sukkot in our hearts, where there’s room for all of us to feel the weight and still hold onto each other. Because even though the world feels so dark right now, we can still find shelter together

Ufros aleiynu sukkat shlomecha
Vetaknenu b’aytza tovah milfanecha
Vehoshieinu

Spread your canopy of peace over us
And repair us with good council before you
And rescue us

About the Author
Sarah Tuttle-Singer is the author of Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered and the New Media Editor at Times of Israel. She was raised in Venice Beach, California on Yiddish lullabies and Civil Rights anthems, and she now lives in Jerusalem with her 3 kids where she climbs roofs, explores cisterns, opens secret doors, talks to strangers, and writes stories about people — especially taxi drivers. Sarah also speaks before audiences left, right, and center through the Jewish Speakers Bureau, asking them to wrestle with important questions while celebrating their willingness to do so. She loves whisky and tacos and chocolate chip cookies and old maps and foreign coins and discovering new ideas from different perspectives. Sarah is a work in progress.