LOOKING FORWARD TO SUKKOT

No handyman myself, when I built my first sukkah, I went to buy wood at The Home Depot with only a scrap of paper with scribbled drawings and measurements and a very, very rough idea of how to build the thing.  “You’re going to build a little… hut?” the man in the aisle said, trying to understand my project and be helpful.  “Well, actually,” I tried to explain, “it’s a sort of a… structure.”  “Oh. I see.  A ‘structure.’  Then you’re going to… sit in it?”  “Uh-huh.”  “And then – let me understand – you’re going to take a lemon and palm branches, and some sticks, and shake them all around – And pray for rain?  While you’re sitting in the hut, outside, praying for rain?”  “Yeah, that’s right.”  “Uh-huh.”

Sukkot is an odd holiday, with its own wonders.  Jewish tradition instructs us to build a “temporary dwelling,” a dirat ara’i, to spend our week in it, to eat in it, bring our fine dishes out to it, and our fine furniture (Shulchan Aruch, Orech Hayim 639:1).  We are even told to sleep in it, much like the Israelites who wandered in the desert, sheltered in sukkot. 

Sukkot combines every child’s desire to go camping in the backyard and every adult’s desire to design his or her own dream home.  Each year, as I schlep out the wood beams and plywood sheets from my garage, I am filled with big dreams about how we’ll decorate the sukkah, how we’ll adorn its walls.  We tie up plastic fruit on the roof planks, tack up pictures of visitors we’d like to have in our sukkah, string up our colored “Sukkah Lights” to add a festive touch.  This year my family celebrates our first Sukkot since we moved to a new house, and, after painting the rooms in the new house and discussing every knob and switch to no end, I even found myself daydreaming about putting up nice wallpaper our new sukkah’s insides.

But there is a warning to us inherent in this holiday.  The sukkah is temporary for a reason.  On Sukkot, we read from the Book of Ecclesiastes, "Vanity, vanity, all is futility!"  Sukkot is ominous as it marks the end of the abundant harvest season and the beginning of foul weather, wind and rain.  A year ago, Sukkot came just after the deadliest of hurricane seasons, and pictures of myriad Americans left homeless crashed in on us.  Sitting in our sukkah on last October’s cold nights, I was again aware of the seriousness of the misfortunes of others. 

Rabbi Shmu'el ben Rabbi Me'ir, who lived in France in the 12th century, taught that the point of Sukkot is that we “remember that it is Adonai your God who gives you the strength to attain any wealth.”  He says that it is “for this reason that we leave our houses which are full of good things at the time of the gathering, and dwell in sukkot, to remember those who did not have any inheritance in the desert, and did not have houses to dwell in.” (Rashbam on Leviticus 23:43)  Sukkot cautions us against pride, against taking our affluence for granted.  It brings us closer to gratefulness, and then, perhaps, to performing acts that give shelter to others.  Maybe the structure we dwell in is called a Sukkat Shalom, “a sukkah of peace,” because our tradition is all too aware of how scarce our resources are, how abundant discord is, how temporary life’s structures are, and how prevalent poverty is all around us in our world, both near and far.  We are beings spiritually in need of permanence.

The festival of Sukkot begins on Friday, October 6 and it lasts for seven days according to the Reform calendar. 

May you and your family be blessed with a Chag Sam’each, a happy Sukkot, and may you be inspired to acts that bring peace and shelter to those all around us.

Rabbi Andy Vogel