Sukkot and Joy!
Notes from Howard Selznick
Sukkot, on the heels of that most somber and reflective of Jewish days, Yom Kippur, is supposed to be joyous (Leviticus 23:40, Deuteronomy 16:14). In Rabbi Janet Marder’s study session at Shabbat-Sukkot services, congregants reflected on the meaning of “joy.”
What kind of joy is in the sukkah? Is it physical pleasure of backyard or fire escape camping?
“Look at us! We’re outdoors eating in our sukkah – woo hoo! “
“Yeah, but it’s freezing out here and it looks like rain. Vay iz mir! You call this joy?”
Indeed, how is it possible to be happy by eating outdoors in a flimsy “booth” when it’s turning cold and rainy?
Sukkot joy is not about “woo hoo, we’re camping in the city; isn’t this fun?” If you think about the immediate environment and personal comfort, then the point is missed.
The Sukkot festival is celebrated for the booths in which the Israelites lived after the Exodus in Egypt (Leviticus 23:43). Living in booths is a link to Jewish historical myth. For those living in Eastern European ghettos, it was a link across time and space from their tenuous existence in less-than- enlightened regimes to a time when Jews were free from slavery.
According to poet Charles Reznikoff [ below], being in Sukkah is a journey from barrenness to garden. To those ghetto dwellers, it was 51 weeks in a crowded, chilly, dank environment and one week of joy somewhere else where life was better, where lush plants and fruits grow –- palm, citron, willows.
The wilderness experience during the Exodus simulated in the sukkah lets imagination run wild. This was especially relevant in those Eastern European ghettos, where living was stateless and rootless – always strangers in someone else’s country. Living in the sukkah recalls the journey to a place of stability; it was your own land where crops grow plentifully and you’re in control.
We go outside physically to the sukkah, but once inside the sukkah, we get spiritual. We may prefer to stay indoors in stable, warm, dry structures; but inside in the sukkah, a fragile structure where it may be cold and windy, we connect to our ancestors who wandered in temporary, flimsy structures, all for the goal of getting to a better place, the land of Israel.
As Samson Raphael Hirsch puts it, our homes may be sturdy and seem permanent, but it’s an illusion, a temporary structure, especially in earthquake country; if this were written in the Midwest, it would be tornadoes; in the southeast, hurricanes. This is Rabbi Janet’s extrapolation of Hirsch’s idea; Hirsch probably didn’t know about earthquakes or North American weather extremes. We need to be in a Sukkah to remind us of the temporary nature of human existence. It may seem “joyous” to be under a roof with lots of furniture, appliances, and books. You may be calm but it’s a house of cards. Instead, the Sukkah brings out an inner joy based not on “stuff” but on a connection to Jewish history. It’s an inner calm being connected to God.
“Feast of Booths,” poem by Charles Reznikoff
From the Kol Haneshama: The Reconstructionist Siddur, Shabbat Vehagim, page 809.
This was the season of our ancestors’ joy:
not only when they gathered the grapes and the
fruit of the trees
in Israel, but when, locked in the dark and
stony streets
they held—symbols of a life from which they
were banished
but to which they would surely return—
the branches of palm trees and of willows, the
twigs of the myrtle,
and the bring odorous citrons.
This was the grove of palms with its deep well
in the stony ghetto in the blaze of noon;
this is the living stream lined with willows;
and this the thick-leaved myrtles and trees
heavy with fruit
in the barren ghetto—a garden
where the unjustly hated were justly safe at last.
In booths this week of holiday
as those who gathered grapes in Israel lived
and also to remember we were cared for
in the wilderness—
I remember how frail my present dwelling is
even if of stones and steel.
I know this is the season of our joy:
we have completed the readings of the Torah
and we begin again;
but I remember how slowly I have learnt,
how little,
how fast the year went by, the years—
how few.
Sukkot, on the heels of that most somber and reflective of Jewish days, Yom Kippur, is supposed to be joyous (Leviticus 23:40, Deuteronomy 16:14). In Rabbi Janet Marder’s study session at Shabbat-Sukkot services, congregants reflected on the meaning of “joy.”
What kind of joy is in the sukkah? Is it physical pleasure of backyard or fire escape camping?
“Look at us! We’re outdoors eating in our sukkah – woo hoo! “
“Yeah, but it’s freezing out here and it looks like rain. Vay iz mir! You call this joy?”
Indeed, how is it possible to be happy by eating outdoors in a flimsy “booth” when it’s turning cold and rainy?
Sukkot joy is not about “woo hoo, we’re camping in the city; isn’t this fun?” If you think about the immediate environment and personal comfort, then the point is missed.
The Sukkot festival is celebrated for the booths in which the Israelites lived after the Exodus in Egypt (Leviticus 23:43). Living in booths is a link to Jewish historical myth. For those living in Eastern European ghettos, it was a link across time and space from their tenuous existence in less-than- enlightened regimes to a time when Jews were free from slavery.
According to poet Charles Reznikoff [ below], being in Sukkah is a journey from barrenness to garden. To those ghetto dwellers, it was 51 weeks in a crowded, chilly, dank environment and one week of joy somewhere else where life was better, where lush plants and fruits grow –- palm, citron, willows.
The wilderness experience during the Exodus simulated in the sukkah lets imagination run wild. This was especially relevant in those Eastern European ghettos, where living was stateless and rootless – always strangers in someone else’s country. Living in the sukkah recalls the journey to a place of stability; it was your own land where crops grow plentifully and you’re in control.
We go outside physically to the sukkah, but once inside the sukkah, we get spiritual. We may prefer to stay indoors in stable, warm, dry structures; but inside in the sukkah, a fragile structure where it may be cold and windy, we connect to our ancestors who wandered in temporary, flimsy structures, all for the goal of getting to a better place, the land of Israel.
As Samson Raphael Hirsch puts it, our homes may be sturdy and seem permanent, but it’s an illusion, a temporary structure, especially in earthquake country; if this were written in the Midwest, it would be tornadoes; in the southeast, hurricanes. This is Rabbi Janet’s extrapolation of Hirsch’s idea; Hirsch probably didn’t know about earthquakes or North American weather extremes. We need to be in a Sukkah to remind us of the temporary nature of human existence. It may seem “joyous” to be under a roof with lots of furniture, appliances, and books. You may be calm but it’s a house of cards. Instead, the Sukkah brings out an inner joy based not on “stuff” but on a connection to Jewish history. It’s an inner calm being connected to God.
“Feast of Booths,” poem by Charles Reznikoff
From the Kol Haneshama: The Reconstructionist Siddur, Shabbat Vehagim, page 809.
This was the season of our ancestors’ joy:
not only when they gathered the grapes and the
fruit of the trees
in Israel, but when, locked in the dark and
stony streets
they held—symbols of a life from which they
were banished
but to which they would surely return—
the branches of palm trees and of willows, the
twigs of the myrtle,
and the bring odorous citrons.
This was the grove of palms with its deep well
in the stony ghetto in the blaze of noon;
this is the living stream lined with willows;
and this the thick-leaved myrtles and trees
heavy with fruit
in the barren ghetto—a garden
where the unjustly hated were justly safe at last.
In booths this week of holiday
as those who gathered grapes in Israel lived
and also to remember we were cared for
in the wilderness—
I remember how frail my present dwelling is
even if of stones and steel.
I know this is the season of our joy:
we have completed the readings of the Torah
and we begin again;
but I remember how slowly I have learnt,
how little,
how fast the year went by, the years—
how few.
posted by Chavarah @ 2:19 PM
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