Sukkot By Rabbi Denise L. Eger

This week we celebrate our fall harvest festival of Sukkot. We interrupt the regular cycle of reading the almost completed Torah to enjoy the bounty of this special week. We wave the etrog (citron) and the lulav (palm bound with myrtle and willow leaves) in the four directions and up and down to invoke the Divine Holy Presence’s protection.

Similarly we are commanded to dwell in our sukkah-eat, maybe even sleep, and certainly we welcome guests into the temporary shelter that also reminds us of the Divine Holy Presence’s protection. We are protected from the elements and seek a place of respite, safety and hospitality in the sukkah.

Our sukkah is fragile. It is not a permanent structure. But like the Tent of Meeting our ancestors worshipped in during the days of wandering in the Sinai, the sukkah is a place that carves out for us an opportunity to commune with God, family, friends and the ancestors of our people. This is one reason we invite to our sukkah with special prayers the ancestors of our people like Sarah and Abraham, Rebekkah and Isaac, Leah and Rachel and Jacob, Miriam, Moses and Aaron, Devorah, and David, Hulda the Scribe. The custom of ushpizin-of invoking and inviting our communal ancestors into the sukkah helps to open our temporary homes to the connections of our past and the dignity, character and legacy that each one of these Biblical heroines and heroes shares with us. By inviting these spiritual teachers and ancestors into our sukkah we embrace the idea that we too can strive to learn from their actions and lives. When we invite these ancestors we hope that we can be blessed with the flow of generosity and hospitality that Sarah and Abraham modeled for us. We hope that we can like Rebekkah and Isaac express devotion and love. We hope and pray that we like Leah and Rachel and Jacob who gave birth to the 12 tribes of our people, have our families be a foundation of the Jewish people. We hope that like Miriam, Moses and Aaron, we can be called to spiritual leadership. We pray and hope by inviting Devorah into our sukkah that we can judge people fairly. We pray and hope by inviting King David into our temporary shelters we can sing to God sweetly as he did. And we pray and hope that like Hulda we can discover new things about our tradition just as she participated in the discovery of a “new book of the Bible” (see Kings II, Chapter 22).

Our ancestors help us measure our own lives. On Sukkot we give thanks for the bounty of our lives and for the gifts of our harvest both the physical harvest and the spiritual one!

In these frenetic days when the storms of the world batter us-we need a temporary shelter—a sukkat shalom-a tabernacle of peace and a place of safety and respite and welcome. The holiday couldn’t come at a better time. And if we look to our ancestors-perhaps too, we will find a way through the storms of life and take inspiration from their gifts.

I wish you a peaceful and joyous Sukkot. Chag Sameach.

Posted by Jimmy at October 12, 2008 11:07 AM