By Rabbi Steven J. Gotlib
This week’s Torah portion is Sukkot: Exodus 33:12 – 34:26, Numbers 29:23 – 28
In his book “Sacred Time,” Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik writes that “of all the holidays on the Jewish calendar, Sukkot … must surely seem to be one of the most out of place in today’s world.” He writes that “the thought of otherwise normal-seeming human beings freely choosing to conduct themselves, however briefly, in so blatantly primitive a manner must strike the onlooker as bewildering at best, if not downright inconceivable.”
It is, however, precisely this apparent “primitivity” that makes the holiday one of our most important on the Jewish calendar. Sukkot, Soloveitchik notes, was originally an agrarian harvest festival celebrated throughout the ancient Near East, which, remarkably, continued to be celebrated by Jews throughout our exile:
“Wherever Jews were living throughout the ages, they sat in sukkot, and over the centuries, Sukkot itself came to symbolize not only the Israelite’s wandering in the desert but also the wandering of Jews throughout the world, from place to place, never staying long, but always loyal to God. The Talmud codified as a matter of law, and Jewish thinkers stressed as a matter of theology, that the sukkah was to be considered a dirat arai, a temporary dwelling, one made to last for only seven days and even then not built high enough that it could mistakenly resemble a dirat keva, something permanent. … Sukkot reminded the Jews that they were an eternal people, that they were part of something much larger, and that their journey on earth began with Abraham’s expedition to a specific land and would eventuate in a return to that land.”
Many lessons can be drawn from sitting in sukkot. Rabbi Dr. Arthur Green, in “Judaism for the World,” argues that something resembling the festival of Sukkot even predates the ancient Near Eastern context of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.
Green suggests that the “transition from the hunter-gatherer period of human history, continuing into the wandering herdsman’s way of life, to that of agriculture and settlement, marked one of the first great changes in human history” and that “the trauma of this change brought about a nostalgia for prior times that somehow needed to be ritually commemorated” across cultures. Thus, he writes, “the hastily thrown together shelter in which we are told to dwell for this week serves as a reminder that our vast network of creature comforts and security devices creates nothing more than an illusory bulwark against mortality” and returns us to precisely the primitive state in which we can best commemorate “our collective survival in the shade we share.”
Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm of blessed memory, on the other hand, reached an opposite conclusion in a sermon recorded in his book “Festivals of Faith”:
“Normally, the interpretation of the significance of this commandment [to sit in a sukkah] points out the independence of man from his possessions. You need not have a fine home and expensive appointments in order to survive. Consider how for seven days you can get along without them. … I prefer to interpret the meaning of Sukkot in the reverse direction, by emphasizing the converse: you are not indispensable to your home, to your society! When a man leaves his dirat keva, his lavish home and complex society, and for seven days he moves out – whether completely, or at least partially, for meals – he discovers that they survive even without his presence!”
This, Lamm wrote, can be “a liberating thought, for it assures us that we can now learn, throughout the year, to pay more attention to the things in life that are really important, and that we will not thereby be endangering the existence of the other, mundane affairs.”
Related to all of these perspectives is that of Dr. Erica Brown, who wrote in an essay on Sukkot that it “reminds us that even buildings of brick and mortar, structures that seem durable and long-lasting, will not last forever. Nothing we humans make will last forever. For now, we are but breath. Breath disappears, true, but it is also that involuntary movement that reminds us that we are still alive, pulsing with gratitude, anxious to create something of importance in this small life we’ve been given.”
Sukkot, thus, is the perfect time to reflect on all we are grateful for, center those people and activities that matter most to us and bring that prioritization back into our regular lives.
Rabbi Steven J. Gotlib is the associate rabbi at Mekor Habracha/Center City Synagogue and director of the Center City Beit Midrash.
