"You shall rejoice in your festival!"
(Deuteronomy 16:14)
Erev Sukkot, Tishrei 14, 5781/October 2, 2020
The seven day festival of Sukkot, like the other Torah mandated pilgrimage festivals of Passover and Shavuot, is a celebration of family, community and people. It is a time for sitting together in our sukkot (booths), for praying together in our synagogues, for gathering together in Jerusalem, for ascending together in large numbers to the Temple Mount, for joining together for Birkat Kohanim - the Priestly Blessing - at the Temple Mount's western wall, for the magnificent annual march through the streets of Jerusalem by Israel's many friends overseas who have come to join us in celebrating G-d's presence in our lives. This year will be different. The unchecked spread of Corona in Israel has compelled the nation to shut down these activities. This year many of us will be sitting only with immediate family in our sukkot throughout the holiday. Mass gatherings like the Priestly Blessing or Simchat Beit HaShoeva get-togethers, are out of the question. And, of course, the shuttered skies preclude the welcoming of our usual guests from overseas.
But the very essence of the holiday remains intact, even if muted by the currently necessary health precautions. Sukkot is primarily about dwelling in our temporary booths for seven days. We leave the comforts of our homes and of our well worn routines, and move all our activities into fragile huts with thin walls which sway in the wind, and a foliage covered roof through whose branches we can see the sun by day and the moon and the stars by night. Outside of the imagined security of our usual four strong walls and protective roofs which seal us off from all that is on the outside, we find ourselves squarely placed in the protective and loving embrace of G-d, and of G-d alone. The illusion of our self made fortresses melts away. The wind, the sun, even the rain, are part of our lives again, as we sit in the shade of G-d's protecting presence. All that exists beyond the frail walls of our sukkot is the world that G-d created, and all that dwells within our sukkot are ourselves and the irrepressible, irresistible, indescribable nearness of G-d's Presence. We require no more than this and we ask for no more than this. Our sukkot are a mini experience of the very same reality which filled and overpowered the pilgrims who journeyed to Jerusalem and the Holy Temple, to join a people fervently celebrating their love affair with G-d. We have stood before G-d on Rosh HaShana and have passed the perilous test of Yom Kippur. We now gather together in G-d's Holy Temple, united in joy - the joy of being alive and in love with G-d.
"You shall make yourself the Festival of Sukkot for seven days, when you gather in the produce from your threshing floor and your vat. And you shall rejoice in your Festival - you, and your son, and your daughter, and your manservant, and your maidservant, and the Levite, and the stranger, and the orphan, and the widow, who are within your cities. Seven days you shall celebrate the Festival to HaShem, your G-d, in the place which HaShem shall choose, because the HaShem, your G-d, will bless you in all your produce, and in all the work of your hands, and you will only be happy." (Deuteronomy 16:13-15)
Within our sukkot we grasp the four species commanded us, "the fruit of the hadar tree, date palm fronds, a branch of a braided tree, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before HaShem your G-d for a seven day period." (Leviticus 23:40) These four species, each possessing unique qualities, represent the totality of our own individuality, and G-d's desire that we hold fast in our hands this expression of our own singularity and by doing so create a unity of peoplehood, a oneness of humanity. This brings G-d pleasure and creates for us the unity of purpose required to move forward into the new year.
This year we will be experiencing all these holiday joys only in small groups, physically separated from one another. But there is no reason to celebrate alone. Only the thin walls of our sukkot will stand between us, and they are no match for G-d's mighty embrace which binds us all together. When we peer through our leafy roofs and see the stars at night, we will be seeing one another, together in G-d's majestic world. Chag Sameach - Have a truly joyful Sukkot!
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