Sukkot 5769

Shabbat Chol Ha-Moed Sukkot 5769 - October 18, 2008

Life is Like a Sukkah

The wisdom of our tradition is to recognize and elevate the journey and not the arrival.

Sukkot always comes too fast. When Yom Kippur ends, I always lull myself into a false sense of relief thinking that I have time to build my sukkah. And every year, I’m stunned to discover how little time there is to get everything ready. And, inevitably, every year, the whole process is more complicated than I had anticipated. This year probably takes the prize for stressful sukkkot preparation. My family and I, who just moved here a few months ago, moved into our new house just before YK. Our movers were quite good and brought all of our things from Los Angeles… except for one important item. They left our sukkah frame back in California. Melanie and I really love sukkot… so there was just no way that we weren’t going to have a sukkah this year. I went out to Home Depot and other stories - not once, but several times - to get parts for the sukkah. With the help of some friends, I managed to get the sukkah up just a few hours before the holiday. Nonetheless, every year, I find myself wishing that our ancestors would have had the foresight to push Sukkot back a few weeks, to give us the proper time to prepare.

But, after spending a few days now in my hastily built sukkah and in the sukkot of friends, I have come to some peace with the sukkot rush. Perhaps our forebearers were wise in putting sukkot so close to YK. Perhaps there is a lesson in this hasty transition. Yom Kippur – if done right – should be a deeply moving and inspiring experience. We do some intense spiritual work between RH and YK. And the question is, how do we wake up on the day after YK? How do we make the transition back into normal life? Are we supposed to return back to life as it had been before? Perhaps Sukkot is the answer to these questions.

YK bids us to transform our lives. But change is difficult and the task can be daunting, even paralyzing. There is so much work to do… where do we start? And the task is so monumental. Sukkot teaches us a number of lessons about how to face the task and how to do it with joy and not dread.

Interestingly, sukkot is like no other celebration in the Jewish year. We have three major festivals – the shalosh regalim – Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. And on each of these we are told that we are supposed to celebrate: “v’samachta v’hagecha” - you shall be happy and you shall celebrate. But, it is only on Sukkot that we have an explicit commandment to be joyful – we call it “zman simchateinu” the season of our joy. Why? What is the reason for such joy on sukkot? Afterall, it isn’t easy to be joyful when you’re sitting outside in the cold trying to eat your food off of paper plates while shooing away the bugs. The reason to be happy on the other two pilgrimage festivals is clear: Passover celebrates our liberation from slavery in Egypt. We escaped slavery and abuse – it is clear why we should be happy. And, Shavuot marks the most monumental event in Jewish history – the day on which we received the Torah on Mount Sinai. Clearly, we should be joyous on Shavuot. But sukkot celebrates something much more difficult to define. Beyond its historical and agricultural connections, sukkot is supposed to serve as a reminder of our 40 year journey through the wilderness. In our long passage from Egypt to the land of Israel, we lived in temporary shelters. But what is there to celebrate about the wandering in the desert. Recall, that the 40 years weren’t such a great time. Indeed, the fact that it took 40 years was itself a punishment. During that time, we repeatedly rebelled, we faced enemies in battle, we experienced hunger and thirst, we sinned and were punished by God. And for this we are supposed to celebrate? And, How do you celebrate a journey? It isn’t a discrete event like receiving the Torah. And why is the journey so important anyway? We have Pesach for the event of liberation, Shavuot for the receiving of the Torah… It is interesting to note that we don’t have a holiday to commemorate our entering into the land of Israel. We don’t have a holiday that marks the crossing of the Jordan River into the land promised to our ancestors… but we do have a holiday to commemorate the long difficult trek through the Sinai desert. Perhaps herein lays the wisdom of sukkot. Perhaps the journey is more important than arriving. Next week we will read the last parsha of the chumash – it is interesting that the story ends before our arrival in the land of Israel. Maybe we are supposed to see ourselves as perpetually on the journey.

We wake up on the day after Yom Kippur with an enormous task ahead of us – to live life better than we did the year before. And we have a choice, we can despair at the futility of our endless strivings for achievement, the way Kohelet sometimes does – believing that everything is hevel – vanity and futility; or we can embrace the sacred uncertainty of the Sukkah. The sukkah has many symbolic and historical meanings, but perhaps it is also a complex metaphor for how to live our lives. Consider a few of the sukkah’s metaphors:

· Like the Sukkah, life is temporary

· Like the Sukkah, life is partially limited by the materials we have at hand and the effort we put into building it.

· Like the Sukkah, there is never enough time or resources to make it just the way you imagined it would be.

· Like the Sukkah, life is better when we share it with others.

· Like the sukkah, life has it’s aspects of stability and strength but it can also be shaky and subject to occasional collapses.

· Like the sukkah, our life is not perfect; it is always in the process of improving. Every year we have a chance to add new things, get rid of some old things, and change what needs to be changed.

· Like the Sukkah, the life we build shelters us from the vicissitudes of the world but it is also porous enough to allow us to experience our surroundings.

· Like the sukkah, our life changes from year-to-year but parts of it follow us wherever we go.

· Like the sukkah, life brings with it the unexpected nuisances, but embracing joy and camaraderie makes it all worthwhile.

The wisdom of our tradition is to recognize and elevate the journey and not the arrival. Kohelet is right about one thing – the destination of life is certain. We all know how this life ends and we all know that none of us gets out of here alive. But Kohelet’s mistake is his despair – his conclusion that because we all await the same fate, then nothing we do really matters. But the wisdom and power of the sukkah is the recognition that the greatest gift we have is the present moment. The great gift of life is the possibility of creating something meaningful right now. And, that if we don’t live our lives with joy, then we risk being miserable.

So in the next few days, when you’re sitting in the sukkah, be sure to look up at the sky, feel the warmth of the sun and the cool of the wind, welcome guests in – whether they were invited or not… and most of all enjoy the journey.

Shabbat Shalom and Hag Samaech – a very joyful and happy holiday.