The Oldest Building

Building a Sukkah reminds us that community is something we make (and re-make).

Shabbat / 1^st Day Yom Tov Sukkot 5770

What is the oldest building in human history that is still standing intact today? Is it the Greek Parthenon? Is it the Roman Coliseum? The Great Pyramid of Giza? Machu Picchu? The great civilizations of world history have all engaged in grandiose building projects. The emperors and kings who commissioned these great buildings intended these massive monuments to stand as symbols of their power and the endurance of the great civilizations over which they ruled. Well, all of these great building lie in some stage of ruin today. Their walls have crumbled, their bricks are broken. The kings who commanded their construction are long-since dead and the enormous empires that built them are the stuff of history books. At one time, we too had a great monument. The Temple in Jerusalem was God’s palace and the center of our religious and national life. It too was destroyed, and yet we as a people have survived the tests of time. We continue to practice our religion and customs more-or-less as our ancient ancestors did. So, what’s the difference? Why are we here, while the Romans – who destroyed our Temple – are not? I would submit to you that we have survived precisely because we learned a valuable lesson following the destruction of our Temple. We learned that stones and bricks don’t make a civilization strong. Instead we have a building that has stood through the ages and sustained us as a civilization for thousands of years. That building is right outside those doors and it might even be in your back yard. The oldest building in human history is the Sukkah.

The sukkah, the little hut we build year after year at the festival of sukkot, is the most stable structure in history precisely because it is not permanent. The Sukkah endures because it isn’t made out of stones and bricks. And Judaism – like the Sukkah – endures because it is a structure that can be reassembled everywhere that history has taken us. Its wobbly walls remain standing because they bend with the winds of changing times. The sukkah’s roof hovers over our heads precisely because it is permeable – letting in new ideas. And, like the Sukkah itself – when we as a people get knocked down, we pick up the pieces and rebuild. What has made it possible for us to survive, where other civilizations did not, is that we have a culture and a religion that is portable and flexible.

But there is yet another lesson to be learned from the Sukkah. The lesson we learned after the destruction of our Temple is that what makes us endure as a people is not the edifices we construct, but rather the process of building them. Impressive structures and magnificent monuments don’t, in themselves, create community. What creates community is the energy of building. This week my family built our sukkah at home. My brother happened to be in town, so he helped me construct the frame on Tuesday. Being an engineer, he had some good ideas that helped improve the sukkah. Melanie helped put up the walls and the schach. Koby hung decorations. Even Hannah and Micah got into the building: as we worked, they looked on with fascination and pretended to build.

There is a wonderful energy in building things – especially when you don’t know exactly how your efforts will turn out. It’s fun to plan and measure and imagine what you want the the project to look like. It’s exciting to gather the materials. There are interesting challenges to solve that you didn’t anticipate at the outset. The act of building is also so gratifying. It feels good to work with our hands. There’s a certain satisfaction in standing back and looking at what you’ve built.

What makes the sukkah such a powerful project is that it brings people together and draws out our collective energy and creativity. It can only do this, precisely because it is a temporary structure. It has this power because we are never done building it. We build it over and over again – and, in doing so, we are able to improve it, to change it, to grow it. Even if it collapses in the middle of the week, it’s still fun to build and it still brings us together. It is this energy that has made us strong as a Jewish community for all these many ages.

Today in the Jewish community, however, we face difficult times. Affiliation with the grand institutions we have built is at an all-time low. We have, perhaps, as a Jewish community, fallen victim to our own success. For the last few generations (in the period following the Shoah) Jews in America spent a lot of time and resources building wonderful institutions. We erected magnificent houses of worship and communal organizations. Our community was animated by the energy of building. And, our people flocked to these buildings when we opened the doors. Now we have these beautiful buildings and we are witnessing a dwindling in the number of people who step inside. Synagogues, which once served as the backbone of Jewish community, are no longer the centers they used to be. There are many reasons that we’ve seen a steady decline in the Jewish community as of late. I don’t mean to explain the entire problem with my metaphor, and I might be overstating the case to make my point, but I propose that one of the reasons we’re seeing this decline is that we, as a community, have built these wonderful structures and we’ve forgotten that what made them so great was not the architecture and decor, but the energy and creativity and the sweat of countless individuals that went into building them. I think this also explains, in part, why the latest hot trend in Jewish communal life is the emergence of independent minyanim and havurot all over the country. Groups like Qohelet or Minyan Na’aleh here in Denver meet in people’s homes, in rented spaces, in converted churches, and in JCCs. They don’t have a lot of money, they often are not lead by ordained rabbis or trained cantors; but, they are animated by the energy of volunteers and invigorated by the excitement of building something new. The lesson of the sukkah is that what really matters is not the strength of the walls, but what happens within those walls. A sukkah with no people in it is no better than the ruins of an ancient fortress.

But, despite how successful some of these small independent groups have been, and how much buzz they have generated, I don’t think these groups represent the future of Jewish community. I think they are an outgrowth of the problem itself – a symptom. Building is exciting, but the answer isn’t to abandon established institutions and start from scratch every 20 years. The problem is that the established institutions of the Jewish community have forgotten their own roots. We have forgotten that we too started out as little shteiblach and grassroots organizations driven by volunteer energy. We were once energized by the excitement of starting something new. And, now that we are established, we have fallen victim to our own success. We are stuck admiring the powerful institutions we built. We think we’ve arrive – that the work is done. The solution isn’t to form new little groups. The solution for the Jewish community is to revitalize the energy and excitement of the building process.

One of the values we find in the celebration of Sukkot is the idea of getting back to basics. By its nature, a sukkah isn’t fancy or elaborate. The sukkah is what it is – three walls and an incomplete roof. It is simultaneously good, but never good enough. It continually calls out to us to do more and do it a little better next time. By its nature, building a sukkah requires people to work together… to connect with one another. That’s what we, in the Jewish community, need right now. We need to get back to basics.

The basic building block of community is human connection. Community is built like a sukkah – by connecting scattered pieces together. This might sound like a continuation of my Rosh Hashanah sermon – that’s because I think it’s that important and it bears repeating. The more we connect with one another, the more we will continue to build our community, the more we will re-energize our community.

One of the interesting aspects of the laws of sukkot is that every individual Jew is required, by halakhah, to build a sukkah. But, you can fulfill the mitzvah of making a sukkah by simply participating in even the smallest way in helping to build a sukkah. If you drive even one nail, turn just one screw, carry one piece of wood, or hang just one decoration, you’ve fulfilled the mitzvah of making a sukkah. My challenge to us all in the coming year is that each of us will take responsibility for building a small part of this sukkah we call the HEA. It can be as simple as sitting with someone you don’t know at Kiddush, inviting someone to your home for Shabbat, being friendly to someone who walks in off the street for the first time, contributing to the Kiddush fund, attending a program you’ve never been to… the list goes on and on. Let’s remember that the mitzvah of is not just to sit in the sukkah, but also to build it.

Shabbat Shalom and Hag Same’ach.