Joy and Vulnerability: The Invitation of Sukkot

October 18, 2024

The Festival of Sukkot began on Wednesday night. Immediately following the journey of the High Holy Days, we are encouraged to spend time dwelling in a structure that is beautiful but fragile, one through which we can see the full moon and the stars, and even through which we will feel the raindrops, should they fall (we begin praying for rain as the rainy season in the land of Israel begins, at the conclusion of Sukkot when we celebrate Simchat Torah/Shemini Atzeret. Please celebrate Simchat Torah with us the evening of October 23rd!.

Sukkot is called “zman simchateinu” – the time of our rejoicing. There is a particular depth to the joy we can experience when we are in touch with our vulnerability, with the precarious nature of our existence. The harvest festival of Sukkot invites us to rejoice in the abundance of our produce, knowing that we are so dependent on the natural cycles in order to have an abundant crop in the next season. We are to gather and connect with family, friends and community, finding joy and strength in being together, though (and because) we recognize with the symbolism of the sukkah – temporary and beautiful – that our lives are fragile and fleeting, dependent on forces we can’t entirely control.

All are welcome to spend time in our TOS sukkah located in our parking lot. Tonight following services, we’ll enjoy our community Oneg Shabbat in the Sukkah (along with our Young Adult cohort who will have their traditional “sushi in the sukkah”). If you’d like to spend any time in the TOS Sukkah throughout the week, please contact Executive Clergy Assistant Daria Cohen at dcohen@ohabei.org. You are welcome to reserve a block of time to host a meal in the sukkah, invite a friend or two to join you for coffee or tea, or simply to spend some time reading a book! It is a mitzvah, a sacred obligation, simply to “dwell” inside of a sukkah during the week-long festival. We will have a lulav and etrog available for the community – please also let Daria know if you’d like to use them as we’ll need to bring them indoors when not in use.

I would like to share two beautiful reflections about Sukkot written this year. I welcome your thoughts or questions about these or anything else, as always. 

From The Jewish Studio Project:

During Sukkot
We live in light-filled
Shadow-kissed
Sun-and-star-sparkled
Sukkahs, basking in 
The beautiful, fragile,
Glorious
Impermanence of life. 
During Sukkot
Multiplicity reigns.
We are inside/outside,
We are here/there.
We are now/then.
We are strong/fragile.
All at once.
During Sukkot
We let the work of the High Holiday season
Wash over us.
In fragile, fluid
Structures, we host
Guests and are hosted by the more than human world.
We enter the cocoon of the Sukkah and invite 
Transformation – gestating,
Metamorphosing,
integrating, into the self
That comes next.
The caterpillar does this
Alone, each in its own 
Cocoon of transformation.
During Sukkot,
We do this together,
Welcoming the possibility
Of collective transformation.

From Sarah Tuttle-Singer, a writer who lives in Jerusalem, comes this post called Sukkot and our Cosmic Spiral through the Stars

And, because it is so timely, I’ll share that I recently began reading a book that had been on my “to read” list for a while: An Immense World, by Pullitzer Prize-winning author Ed Yong. The book is about the incredible diversity in how earth’s creatures perceive the world. In a review of the book, one publication described it thus: “Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.” This got me thinking about how the holiday of Sukkot also invites us to see through other eyes. As we peer through the roofs of sukkot (plural of sukkah) made of branches through which we can see the sky differently than usual, may we experience the wonder and joy to be found in acknowledging our vulnerability and the miracle of simply being. Especially this year, remembering the devastation that occurred in Israel just after last Sukkot and the incredible challenges of the past year, may we find, know, and hold on to that joy and be strengthened by it.

Rabbi Audrey Marcus Berkman