The Embrace We All Need

It’s so difficult to find words when one’s heart is full.  We want to say all the words, and, at the same time, none of the words seem to be the right ones.  My teacher Rabbi Dr. Ilay Ofran wrote in his WhatsApp message yesterday that he normally avoids the word meragesh, “exciting,” because it’s a word that says too much and therefore nothing at all.  One can be joyfully excited or tearfully excited.  But these last few days, he said, make this the perfect word – because we hold so many emotions at the same time.  

We feel an inconceivable joy, he writes, over the return of the kidnapped, the closest thing imaginable to techiyat ha-meitim, the Messianic resurrection of the dead.  And a simultaneous deep, burning sadness for the families who will not be able to hold their loved ones.  And tremendous anger over the release of hundreds of the murderers of our brothers and sisters.  And great fear of what is yet to come upon us under this imperfect agreement, and, on the other hand, a deep hope that perhaps the war is finally over and a better time is ahead of us. There is room for a multitude of emotions – frustration and anger, love and hatred, calm and panic. 

The Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria, explains that there’s a reason that our Sukkah must have two walls plus part of a third.  It’s an embrace.  We read in the Song of Songs, Shir HaShirim: semolo tachat le-roshi, vi-yemino techabkeni, “his left hand is under my head, and his right hand hugs me.”  The Ari explains that our arms have three parts: from shoulder to elbow, from elbow to wrist, and from wrist to fingertips.  And these are the walls of the Sukkah, which are like the arm of God bringing us in for a big hug.  And when we celebrate His Torah on Simchat Torah, we hug God in return.

The human soul can hold a multitude of conflicting and competing emotions at the same time – and so must we at this historic moment.   Each of us can zigzag between them, or, as Rav Ofran suggests, we can enter this new reality not as individuals, but as a broad community: everyone will feel what he or she feels at any given moment, and we are all there for one another – and we will not silence each other – as we go through this next stage of Jewish history together.  

A sukkah has certain halakhic requirements: it cannot be too short nor too tall.  But the Lubavitcher Rebbe taught that the Sukkah has no limits on its width or depth: it can be as big as we’d like.  One day, we have prayed, we will all be able to sit in one great Sukkah together, celebrating the chag and enjoying one another’s company.   

Maybe, just maybe, that day could be now.

Chag Sameach.