Beauty of Sukkot
What an amazing feeling it is to be ready to immerse ourselves in the beauty of Sukkot! Since I was a child, Sukkot has always been my favorite Holy day and even today it provides me with my very own hide away “spot” within The Jewish Calendar.
After the overwhelming and awesome number of people that come to The Synagogue for The Yamim HaNoraim, after many of us have had our “deep immersion” in Judaism for the entire year, Sukkot is very often one of the least attended Holy Days. Sukkot is the time of the year when we really experience an outmost sense of Joy!
For me as a Rabbi, it provides some very much needed spiritual time with my family and also with my own soul. The smell of the Etrog alone brings back memories of years gone past and the promise we just made ourselves not even five days ago to live our lives anew as we strive to reach our full potential as human beings.
Sukkot is sometimes referred to simply as “Sman Simchatenu,” The Time of Our Rejoicing. I have always marveled at this name, because on one hand it is a Mitzvah to rejoice on Sukkot and on the other we need to be constantly mindful of the fragility in life that The Sukkah itself represents. It is almost like a balancing act; we see fragility all around us and in these times of economic hardship, we don’t even need the Sukkah to remind us! And yet we must rejoice because we have reached this point in time together with those whom we love and treasure.
This year, that feeling of balancing fragility and joy is especially poignant. When our new Assistant Rabbi, Adam Watstein, came to Las Vegas and he was looking to buy a house, I went around with him looking at different homes. Many times we would come into a house that was in foreclosure and was already owned by a bank. Many of these homes were in perfect condition but others still had personal belongings left behind by the owner. The feeling that you get when you know that a family who once lived there viewed that home as their permanent dwelling and all of a sudden that security was no longer there for them was one of the worst feelings I have ever felt! It really brought home for me the fragility of our dwelling places and the fragility of life.
The Sukkah as a symbol is fragile and it is the outmost expression of nomadic life and non permanence that we have in The Jewish Tradition. The Sukkah is also a symbol of hope! If we look at our history, we know that even though we traveled from place to place for 40 years in the wilderness, there was an incredible ending to the story, God ultimately brought us to Eretz Israel, our Promised Land flowing with Milk and Honey.
This has been a year marked by the tumbling of our financial institutions, the collapse of the sub prime lending frenzy and millions of foreclosures. The message that Judaism has to offer is one of hope and growth. As a result of a new appreciation for the frailty of our way of life, we may also experience a renewed respect for what it means to have a roof over our heads. Once a year, we dwell in our Sukkah. We have been doing it for thousands of years — not because we are preparing for difficult times ahead but because we understand what can happen if we don’t force ourselves to remember how fragile and unpredictable life can be.
Hag Sameach
Rabbi Felipe Goodman
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