Sukkot 5767 Temporary and Permanent

Sukkot 5767 - Temporary and Permanent

This week we celebrate the holiday of Sukkot. Usually there is a special Shabbat reading during Sukkot, but this year, Sukkot occurs on Shabbat. We therefore read the reading for the first day of Sukkot, which gives the mitzvah for Sukkot:
33. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 34. Speak to the people of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the Feast of Booths for seven days to the Lord… 39. Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep a feast to the Lord seven days; on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath… 41. And you shall keep it a feast to the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month. 42. You shall dwell in booths seven days; all who are Israelites born shall dwell in booths; 43. That your generations may know that I made the people of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God. [Leviticus 23]

We are told that we are to dwell in booths like the people did as they left Egypt. They are temporary homes. The halakah for Sukkot even mentions that the stars are to be seen through the roof. We have a house with an intentionally leaky roof, walls which often cannot stand a large breeze and very little temperature control. Since the first Ashkenaz Jews came north to the Rhine valley a thousand years ago, the Jewish population also has to deal with the cold weather of autumn when dwelling in their Sukkahs.

I have the most nostalgic memories of Sukkot. One of my fondest memories of childhood is building sukkahs. My family didn’t have our own sukkah, but my dad, year after year designed and put up the sukkah for the conservative synagogue we belonged to. In one of those great father and son moments, I always helped put it up. In some otherwise insane combination of lead pipe, two by fours, nails, chicken wire and corn husks, he invariably created a sukkah that could withstand the obnoxious autumn weather of Rochester, New York. I remember many a day where my religious school class would be in our winter jackets with earmuffs, gloves and hats on in that sukkah, but today I only fill the warmth that was there in its construction.

Yet as I wrote in my Sukkot commentaries in the past, one important point of the holiday is to see change. We read Ecclesiastes, which begins with an interesting Hebrew word, Hevel. Hevel means emptiness but in the way a breath is empty. One minute it’s blowing but eventually it will change. For Ecclesiastes, everything is transitory. We observe the changes in the world around us as the leaves on the trees pumpkins and gourds turn brilliantly warm colors of yellow, orange and red, in contrast to the dropping temperatures, and cold grey skies, wind and rain of October.
After the time of repentance of the Ten Days, it is time for reflection, a harvest not of crops but of our souls. Sukkot is a time to figure out what is our personal and communal harvest for the past year -- what we did right and how we changed. I started to notice many of these over the last few weeks, but it is during Sukkot I really am reflecting on this. As I said in my Rosh Hashanah drash, I learned a lot about fear over the last year, and more importantly how to get over fear, be it roller coasters or women. The fear of approaching someone I find attractive and simply saying "hello" is far less that it was this time last year. I’m even looking forward, though in an apprehensive way, to Expedition Everest, the latest thrill ride on my forthcoming trip to Disney. Yet, the sukkah itself puts fear into perspective. In a sukkah, one is at the mercy on the elements. It might rain on you. In a strong wind, it might blow down and collapse on you. Yet the temporary nature of the booth is such that it is lightweight and really wouldn’t hurt.

I also think of the changes in the thirty some odd years since those sukkahs my dad built. These days, it’s the custodial help of the synagogues who put up such things. Coming full circle, for the first time this year there is a new generation in my family going to the sukkah and decorating with popcorn chains, crayon decorations, cranberries and corn husks. Like many families I doubt my nieces and nephew will ever have memories of actually putting up the chicken wire walls of their sukkah with blue electrical wire. Even thirty years ago such things were relegated to the parking lot of the synagogue.

In the Leviticus 23 passage is an interesting irony: the most temporary of booths must be the most permanent of mitzvot with the command “It shall be a statute forever in your generations” [23:41]. In a place where we have comfortable walls only a few yards away we expose ourselves to the weather exactly when the weather starts to become uncomfortable to be outside. In a world were no one else would eat in such shanties unless they are homeless, all Jews are required to publicly show they are different than their gentile neighbors by having this not exactly beautiful booth out in their yard for the neighbors to see. If we follow the mitzvot of Sukkot, we identify ourselves as Jews. And maybe that's why there are so few suburban sukkahs -- we are ashamed of admitting our identity.

That thought came up during a yom kippur discussion about Tikkun Olam . Some people believe that charitable acts not for Jewish causes are not very Jewish. Indeed some will go as far as saying it diminishes Judaism to work alongside a secular or Christian charitable organization. Some were taken aback by one critic who claimed when it came to social justice, there was no difference between the synagogue and the local office of the ACLU.

Funny thing is, I didn’t know this person. I assume he was a member of my synagogue, but I haven’t seen him at regular Shabbat services. Synagogues are primarily prayer communities, as part of Jewish identity. Our identity is bound in the liturgy and observance. If one does not say the Barchu or Kedushah with the rest of us, is he distinguishable from any other secular American?

In Brachot 55a, we are told by the Rabbis that since the destruction of the Temple, our dining room tables are our altars, the place we eat is our holy space. In a sense the Sukkah where we are to eat two meals a day becomes a temporary holy space, one almost congruent to the Mishkan, that temporary temple in the desert and used until the time of Solomon. And it is interesting that many feel this intuitively, putting on kippot only worn in holy space in the sukkah. Abraham Joshua Heschel commented during the march at Selma he was praying with his feet. How much more so we should pray with our feet in a minyan? How much more so that we should believe every act of Tikkun Olam is done in holy space, and should be treated like a prayer space?

I believe the real issue is not about working with secular or other religions organizations; it’s that we do it in a way that is holy and congruent to Jewish practices. The traditions and kavvanah involved in any service to the greater community, needs to identify us as Jews. Even if our home practice is not strictly halakic, when working on Tikkun Olam in any form we should take on practices that identify us as Jews. If there is a shared meal while doing such community service, we don’t eat pork or shrimp or cheeseburgers. We wear kippot or head wear as if we are in synagogue or a house of study. We don’t do volunteering on Saturday mornings at the least, and preferably none at all because it is Shabbos. Gemilut Hasidim, acts of kindness does not replace Avodah (worship) and Torah (observance and study). All three are part of a three legged stool holding up the world. Like placing a sukkah in the back yard, observances in public identifies us as Jewish. And without that visual identity there is no difference between us and our neighbors. A light unto the nations cannot shine if it is hidden.

Those rickety chicken wire walls, protected only by the same gourds as Jonah’s sukkah, remind me that everyone can see into such a booth as a sukkah, and see our observance. In all my wanderings away from Judaism and back, it was the very temporary sukkah that always remained in my mind, the most permanent of the traditions I liked to follow, and regretted when I could not. I know there are many who will not place the sukkah in their back yard. Some will visit someone else’s. Some will go to that one in their synagogue parking lot that was put up by the custodial help, or even put up by a few determined members who just think it’s an important mitzvah to do. Some regardless of the weather will be eating meals in jackets and mittens and sitting on rain soaked chairs. There is always fear about what the neighbors would think, but as I learned though the last year it is like the fears of asking women for a date or riding a thrill ride at Disney World. Often, though sadly not always, that fear is misplaced. But in the end, if we do not say “I am a Jew, and that’s a good thing” both verbally and in action, we may lose being a Jew.

Quite a thing to be learned from a rickety booth.