Sukkot 5785: Framing the past year and (re)framing our lives

In January 2024 I went to the Gaza region to volunteer at various agricultural settlements. Upon my return, I stopped in Sderot, which at the time was a ghost town. Most people had not returned, and more than a few may never return. Driving along the road, I noticed sukkah after sukkah still standing in the front yards. Some of them had collapsed in the wind and the rain, the canvases flapping in the breeze.  Given that the massacre had happened on Simchat Torah, most had not yet taken down their sukkot.

This flimsy temporary structure, meant only for a week, a moment in time, stood there like a monument to October 7. It was as if time itself was frozen. Months had gone by, but for Sderot it was still October 7; it was still Simchat Torah. I would venture to say what is true for Sderot is still true for all of us. Especially with over one hundred hostages still in captivity, time has seemed to stop; a year has passed us by but the pain, fear and anxiety remain ubiquitous.

Yet, we are enjoined on the holiday of Sukkot and Simchat Torah to rejoice; the prayers call these days zman simchateinu (the time of our joy). Indeed, no fewer than three times does the Torah command us to rejoice on these days, and the holiday embodies the symbol of joy itself. (See Maim. Hilkhot Shofar, Sukkah V’lulav 8:12.) During the time of the Temple, there would be nightly celebrations of dancing and music throughout the night, the Simchat Beit Hoshoeva. Maimonides emphasized that the failure to rejoice is worthy of punishment, as the curses in Deuteronomy are linked to the fact that “you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and fullness of heart’ (ibid. 8:14). Note the emphasis here is not on the performance of commandments, but how one performs the commandments.

How in any conceivable world can we express joy during such a difficult time? To say one is joyful now seems callous and inappropriate. How can we think about this year, a year in which the very image of the sukkah still triggers such raw emotions, when the temporary huts of last year still haunt the imaginations of all of us this year. Nonetheless, I will humbly offer a framework through which we might understand celebrating times of joy in the midst of sadness.

Let’s begin with that flimsy frame of the sukkah. It is by design a structure that is temporary, with a roof that allows one to see the heavens and does not protect one from the elements. In other words, for a sukkah to actually be a kosher sukkah, there must be a certain amount of covering in such a way that we feel a sense of shade, but simultaneously it decidedly cannot insulate us. What is the point of a home without a roof? In this paradoxical structure, a ‘non-structure’, our tradition forces us to reconsider our existential frameworks and how we navigate our daily lives.

In truth, we only think that our roofs are permanent, protecting us from the storms which rage on the outside, whether those storms are literal or metaphorical. In reality, the edifices we strive to create in this life are always provisional, always temporary. With this knowledge, we look upward, and the sukkah allows us to look heavenward. At that moment, we realize the true security is found under the canopy of heaven. That in reality is our roof.

The rabbinic tradition brings a dispute regarding the meaning of the word sukkot in the Torah (Lev. 23:43). Without delving into the literary and semantic proofs, Rabbi Eliezer argues that the sukkot were literal booths, the flimsy structures of which we spoke. Rabbi Akiva, however, argues that the sukkot in which the Israelites lived in the wilderness do not refer to literal booths, but rather to the miraculous clouds of glory which traveled with them throughout the forty-year journey. These clouds provided not only shade from the unremitting heat of the sun, but miraculously the rabbis attributed these clouds with causing their clothing not to wear out or even their foots to swell for forty years (Deut. 8:4). Another midrash states the clouds surrounded them from all sides- even below them- leveling the ground and preventing the poisonous scorpions (See e.g. Rashi Number 10:34). These two explanations seem diametrically opposed and yet there is a connection between the two.

Through the experience of the vulnerability of the temporary structure, one comes to the realization that true permanence in this world can only be found in the relationship with that which is eternal. Our ultimate framework of understanding is expanded. Yes, at this point in time, at this point in history, we feel a sense of uncertainty, fear and doubt. Yet, we do not only stand under this temporary hut, here today and gone tomorrow, but we stand before the universe. God traveled with us in the form of a cloud, not merely in the wilderness, but throughout our long history. Our lives are part of this grander narrative, and we do not need to be completely consumed by the present moment. All moments flow into one another in a grand scheme of eternity, and in this world we are able to find moments of hope and even joy. In other words, without reducing the heaviness we feel in the present moment, we contextualize it. Ironically, the temporary and vulnerable sukkah also provides moments of joy as well, in the form of the shade it provides.

Interestingly, we noted that the sukkah must not only provide the opportunity to look heavenward, but also must provide more shade than sunlight. The casting of shade, even momentary, is symbolic of God’s protection and love (see e.g. Isaiah 4:6, Psalms91).^[1]  In Psalm 121 we read that “God is your protector, God is your shade on your right hand.” The shade from the hot sun is immediately experienced by all of us as a moment of relief, and that experience is meant as a moment of reflection of all the times in our lives in which we have received metaphorical shade, moments of respite and relief. The moments of shade might at times be fleeting, especially during these difficult days, but our tradition forces us to reflect upon them as well as indicative of the goodness and beneficence of the Divine and the wonder of the universe in which we live.^[2]

Hence, to experience joy on this day does not necessarily mean we are insensitive, inured to real pain and suffering around us. It means that we refuse to defined that pain as the only message of our lives, for that would lead to despair and a sense of futility. In sitting in the shade of the sukkah, experiencing the temporary relief, we are reminded of God’s goodness throughout our personal and collective lives as well. Sitting under our sukkah, we can imagine other Jews in other times- better times- sitting there as well. We gain strength from our people, our faith and our God that we will not only survive but thrive. We remember that Jews have always lived in sukkot -in temporary huts full of vulnerability and danger- but we also remember that we live our lives under the canopy of the Divine, witnessing in our own lifetimes miracles, protection and deliverance. We hold on to this realization as well, especially now.

My youngest son told me a wonderful story. A number of months ago a group of Orthodox rabbis went to Sderot as I did, and also witnessed the still standing sukkot, symbols of trauma and enduring pain. They saw an older gentlemen who had finally returned after months, taking apart the sukkah. The rabbis walked over to him, and volunteered to help to take it apart, piece by piece. A simple gesture of help, so pregnant with meaning! The head of the delegation related to my son that he saw in this act a true chesed, a great kindness. They did not only take apart a structure but tried to bear the pain and burden with him, and for a moment perhaps transform a moment of trauma into a moment of support and love. They tried to deconstruct the trauma embedded in his heart, replacing it with acts of kindness and love. They hoped that in his memory moving forward, the sukkah he would build would not only trigger memories of loss and trauma, but also acts of unity and love.

On sukkot we read the book of Ecclesiastes, in which he counsels there is a ‘time for everything under the sun.’ The contemporary Hebrew poet Yehudah Amichai in his poem A Man Doesn’t Have Time In His Life writes

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

This year we will cry and laugh, mourn and rejoice, remember and forget all at the same time. We can live in the contradictions of celebrating during these days. We can weave complex narratives in which the moment in which we live can have multiple resonances and meanings for the present and moving forward. We can go outside our permanent homes and structures- the framework in which we live- and open ourselves to the infinite heavens of possibilities. We can reframe our sukkot and our lives.

In the next year, what will each of us do to take apart that still standing sukkah from 5784? What acts will we do, both large and small, which will write the next chapter in our history? Hopefully decades from now, when we need to tell the stories of these days, we will also remember the endless stories of faith, courage, resilience and love in the midst of trauma and suffering. Hopefully we will include our own stories as well. As we sit under the sukkah this year, enjoying its shade, let’s also mark these days by telling these stories as well.  We need them more than ever.

Chag Sameach

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[1] For and extended treatment see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The History of Sukkot in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods, (USA: Brown Univ, 1995) pp. 245-256.  Interestingly, the walls of a sukkah cannot be higher than twenty handbreadths out of the concern that the shade will derive from the wall and not the thatch above.  The interplay between light and shade is what brings one the theme of shade to consciousness.

[2] See the fourth chapter of Jonah, in which Jonah creates a sukkah outside of Nineveh, and God caused a gourd plant to grow over his head to provide shade.  The texts describes Jonah as deriving ‘great joy’ from this gesture of relief and care (Jonah 4:6-7).