One Year Out: An October 7 Sukkah Manifesto

I was asked recently to come and teach about the holiday of Sukkot to a group of about 20 teenagers, all of whom are in public schools, the children of Russian or recently arrived Ukrainian Jewish families, with no formal Jewish education, and who mostly live far from where the majority of the Jewish community lives.  It was your standard pizza in the sukkah event, on a Sunday morning, with twenty teenagers dragged by their parents, sitting on chairs in a semi-circle in the sukkah, scrolling absentmindedly on their phones, on TikTok, Instagram, or playing Clash of Clans.

My goal was to share some of the ever-evolving meanings given to the key symbols of the holiday of Sukkot, which are shared and learned every year during the holiday itself, providing depth to, and illuminating aspects of the holiday.

What I want to share here is based on what I experienced in the sukkah with these teenagers, and what I learned from them.  It has led me to rethink some of the core meanings about sukkot and who we are as a people.

The sukkah, the schach covering overhead, and the four species, also called the arba’a minim; all have multiple meanings and teachings, developed over 2,000 plus years of exile.  Before leaning into mystical, rabbinic or chassidic teachings of these items, it’s important to first begin with the original source material, the biblical origins of the holiday and its requirements:

“Mark, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the yield of your land, you shall observe the festival of יהוה [to last] seven days: a complete rest on the first day, and a complete rest on the eighth day. On the first day you shall take the product of hadar trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before your God יהוה seven days. You shall observe it as a festival of יהוה for seven days in the year; you shall observe it in the seventh month as a law for all time, throughout the ages. You shall live in booths seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt — I, your God יהוה. So Moses declared to the Israelites the set times of יהוה.”

Vayikrah (Leviticus) 23:39-44

The harvest-gathering, agricultural roots of the holiday epitomized by the four species listed, and the link to both the Land of Israel and the citizens of Israel are directly stated in the verses.  And indeed, this was how Sukkot was celebrated each and every one of the years in which the Jews were a sovereign entity in the Land of Israel, coming to an abrupt and violent end with the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in the year 70 CE, and the Jewish rebellion suppressed in 135 CE, leading to complete devastation for the local Jewish population, the renaming of the Land of Israel to Syria Palestina by the Romans, in the hopes of severing the Jewish connection to the land.

With tragic loss of life, forced displacements, and widespread enslavement, the long exile for our Jewish ancestors began, and with it over the ensuing centuries, the recalibration of Judaism from a land and temple-based religion to the portable, adaptable religion we know of today.

At this point in the learning session, I paused to ask the teens if they knew any of this history, if they knew that we had this ancient connection to the land of Israel, that we had a temple and sovereignty.  All of them shook their head no.

I continued with the lesson, explaining that even in exile, the sukkah and lulav and etrog remained, but evolved fundamentally from its origins.  Widely known teachings about the arba’a minim, the four species include:

• Relating each of the species as a particular limb through which man is to serve God (e.g. the etrog refers to the heart, the lulav (palm branch) is the spine, the hadas (myrtle) corresponds to the eyes, and the aravah (willow) corresponding to the mouth);
• The midrash that teaches that the four species symbolize four types of Jews, with differing levels of Torah knowledge and observance. Bringing them together represents our unity as a nation—despite our external differences. The etrog represents a person who studies Torah and fulfills the mitzvot, the lulav represents one who studies Torah but does not perform mitzvot, the myrtle represents one who fulfills mitzvot but does not study Torah, and the willow represents a Jew who neither studies Torah nor observes mitzvot.

Both are powerful symbols, to be sure: Serving God requires all of who we are, and that every Jew, no matter, what their level of knowledge or practice, must see his or her fellow Jew as being part of the family, each of us belonging to a collective that shares a Godly spark and a common story.

At this point, I paused again and asked one of the younger teenagers, no more than 12 or 13, to share back something he learned in the lesson.  He mentioned the connection between the hadas (myrtle) and the eyes.  I nodded and noticed he had been on his phone a fair bit before the lesson started.  I asked him what he “sees” on social media.  He looked down and said two things:

“That we are committing a genocide… and that everyone hates us… WHY do they hate us?”

I looked around the room, and everyone was silent, frozen.  “Is that what you all see?” I asked.  Every head nodded yes.

It’s 5785, it’s a year out from October 7, our brothers and sisters are fighting to defend Israel, antisemitism is alive and well in our streets, across our country, and in cities across the world, and we need a new meaning for Sukkot and it’s symbols.  We need a new Sukkot manifesto; the classic Sukkot teachings aren’t enough anymore.

And here it is, a full, relevant reframing of the four species, an October 7^th Jew type of Sukkah teaching:

All of Me: Four species as limbs

Each of the four species relates to a particular limb through which we are to serve God and take care of His People – put differently, for the job we have to do in this world, it’s all in, and requires everything we have:

• The etrog refers to the heart, the place where we feel deeply, where we feel pain and joy, where we can learn to move from grief in one moment to love and simcha, happiness in the next. Don’t close your heart, don’t pull back, don’t go numb from fear or anxiety, fight it with everything you have, we have a lot of love to share as a community and as a people.  If the world can’t accept that love now, that’s ok, but let’s make sure to share our love, our heart and our compassion within our families, our community and our people.
• The lulav refers to the backbone, the spine. It’s a hard brutal world, that, to quote Rocky Balboa, “will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.”  Stand up strong, be proud Jews, be assertive, know when to be immovable, and when to bend.  But stand up!
• The hadas corresponds to the eyes. We see so much hate and ugliness in this world, it floods us on our screens and devices, and in our streets and college campuses.  And that can blind us to the good and the beautiful.  And make no mistake, there IS good and there IS beauty.  Practice focusing on the positive, learn to see the good and the light that exists in this world.
• The aravah represents the lips, the mouth. Of the four species, it’s the one that degrades and decomposes the quickest, the first of the species to give in to the way the physical world operates.  And we’re not that different – we’re timid, we’re unsure, we don’t know our facts, our story, and we go quiet.  So speak up, use your voice, tell our story to those open to learning and listening.  Share a kind word, lift people up, use your words to make a difference.

All In: Four species (smell / taste) symbolizing four types of Jews

Taste represents learning, knowledge, knowing our history and our story, having confidence in our origins, knowing through and through that we as Jews have the right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland.  And that we have rights as citizens of this country, as residents of this province, to be safe and secure. 

Smell represents both mitzvot and action, making a difference, in ways both big and small, public and private.  At the family level, at the community level, at the municipal, provincial and national level.

We are all built so differently.  Here at home, in our city, our Jewish community is indeed a community of communities.  And to quote country singer Miranda Lambert, we are “all, all kinds of kinds”.

In this context, we have etrog Jews that have a deep foundation of learning and knowledge, who add value to this world through their actions, who stand up and defend our rights, who fight and die defending the State of Israel, who fight to continue to make space for us on campus and on our streets.  We have lulav Jews who know our history, know the truth, but who struggle to know how to act on that in this world.  We have hadas Jews, who know so little about the specifics of our story, but are now lighting Shabbat candles, getting involved with campus activism, who donate money and time and energy to making a difference.  And we have aravah Jews, who never had the privilege of a Jewish education, who may not have family or connections in Israel, and who don’t really get involved, or may want to but not have the confidence to do so.

United we stand, divided we fall.  When we bring the lulav and etrog together, when we hold the arba’a minim, the four species, to make the brachah, it’s all or nothing.  As a symbol, it only has value in it’s togetherness.  So let’s hold each other tight, let’s lift each other up, we each matter.  All in, all together.  Unified.

Chag sameach.