Mental health in the Megilla – Sukkot: A Home With Holes In It

A few days ago we stood in shul and begged to be written for life. We fasted, we cried, we meant every word. And now, almost before the fast is fully out of us, we’re told to go outside, build a flimsy little hut with gaps in the roof, and be happy.

It’s strange choreography. From the holiest, heaviest day of the year, straight out into a shaky booth in the backyard. But I’ve come to think it’s one of the wisest turns on the whole calendar.

The most fragile house we build all year

A sukkah is, by design, barely a building. The walls can shake. The roof has to have holes in it, real gaps we can see the stars through. If it’s too solid, too sealed, too permanent, it isn’t kosher. The one hard requirement is that it not be too sturdy.

Think about that. Every other structure we build, we want strong. Storm-proof. Sealed against the weather. The sukkah is the one home we’re commanded to build knowing it can’t fully protect us, and then to move into it, and to call those seven days our season of joy.

Because the sukkah tells the truth about every house we live in. We spend so much of our lives trying to build something that can’t be shaken, the secure job, the sealed-up life, the roof with no gaps. And then a phone call comes, or a diagnosis, or a loss, and we find out what we half-knew all along. None of our roofs were ever as solid as we told ourselves.

The sukkah says: stop pretending. Come sit in something honest for a week. Something with holes in it, like your actual life. And find the joy right there anyway.

Kohelet, in the middle of the party

And then, on Sukkot of all times, we read Kohelet.

It’s a jarring choice. Sukkot is z’man simchateinu, our season of joy, and into the middle of it we drop the most famously bleak book in Tanach. Hevel havelim, says Kohelet. Everything is fleeting, a breath, a vapor. He looks at wealth, achievement, pleasure, the whole highlight reel, and keeps saying, it passes, it passes, none of it lasts.

Why read that at the happiest time of the year?

I think it’s the same lesson as the roof full of holes. Kohelet isn’t trying to depress us. He’s trying to free us. He’s clearing away every fake, permanent thing we’ve been white-knuckling, so we can finally see the real, fragile, fleeting things and love them while they’re here. And Kohelet doesn’t end in despair. He ends by saying, eat your bread, enjoy your life, be with the people you love, because it’s brief. The breath doesn’t cancel the joy. The breath is exactly why the joy matters.

That, to me, is one of the healthiest things a person can learn. Joy and fragility aren’t opposites. The most real joy we ever feel is almost always the kind that knows it won’t last forever, and shows up anyway.

I’ll admit this one sits close to home right now. I’ve spent the past year writing a book about exactly this argument, and it’s finally done. A Year With Kohelet is a fictional diary of one Jewish year, Sukkot to Sukkot, in an Israel at war. A grandfather named Eli, a business that won’t quite pay, a son’s army bag zipped by the door, and a granddaughter who asks him on the first night the question the whole year turns on: are you happy, Saba? All year Eli writes things down and argues with Kohelet, the old king who called everything smoke and then, in the same breath, commanded joy. It’s about the same things this blog is about, the parts of ourselves we don’t usually bring to shul, and the old texts that knew about them all along.

Sitting in the unsteady thing

Here’s where this lands for anyone whose life feels shaky right now.

Some of us are heading into these “days of joy” in a season that’s anything but. Something is unsteady. The walls are moving. We can see too many stars through too many holes in the roof. And it can feel like everyone else is in a solid house celebrating, and we’re the only ones out in the wind.

But that’s the whole point of the week. We’re all out in the wind. Every single one of us is sitting in a structure that can’t fully protect us. That’s not a personal failure. That’s the human condition, and the Torah pulls us all out into it together, on purpose, side by side.

And here’s the part that undoes me. We make a bracha over sitting in that fragile hut. We call it joy. Not because we’ve been fooled into thinking it’s safe, but because we’ve stopped needing it to be safe in order to be grateful we’re in it, alive, together, under the same open sky.

What we can carry into the chag

None of this is me having it figured out. It’s just what I want us to carry into the chag together.

Let’s stop pretending our roofs are solid. Everyone’s has holes. Naming that isn’t gloom, it’s honesty, and honesty is lighter to carry than the pretending.

Let’s find the joy inside the fragile thing, not after it. We don’t have to wait for life to feel secure to let ourselves feel glad. It may never feel fully secure. The joy is available now, holes and all.

Let’s remember we’re all out in the wind. If our life feels shaky this chag, we haven’t fallen behind. We’re just sitting closer to the truth everyone else is sitting in too.

And let’s love the fleeting things out loud. That’s Kohelet’s whole point. It’s brief, so don’t wait. Say it, hug them, show up, enjoy the bread, while it’s here.

May we all find real joy this Sukkot, not the kind that needs everything to be perfect first, but the kind that sits down in the unsteady, star-lit, wide-open little hut of a real life, and calls it home. Chag sameach.

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Dedicated l’ilui nishmat Zev (Will) Shakin, z”l, who loved Israel and lived v’ahavta l’reacha kamocha. May his memory be a blessing, and may his light keep reaching the people who need it.

Mental Health in the Parsha is a weekly series on the weekly Torah portion and what it can offer us right now. These thoughts are meant for reflection and conversation, not as a replacement for professional mental health care.