The Fragility of Life (adapted from Rabbi Y. Y. Jacobson)
This Monday evening begin celebrating the holiday of sukkot. Jews across the globe will relocate from their permanent homes and apartments to dwell in a sukkah, a makeshift hut covered with branches, bamboo sticks or reeds. During this seven-day festival, we will eat, drink, schmooz, read, relax, debate and hang out in a sukkah. Many Jews, especially where the climate is more conducive, even spend the nights sleeping in these huts.
The Torah teaches us that sitting in the shade of the sukkah is a reminder of the protection and shelter G‑d provided to our ancestors as they journeyed through the desert. Yet if we seek to express G‑d’s protection over us, shouldn’t we sit in a more stable and secure structure? Surely G‑d’s protection provides more security than does the make-shift sukkah? The answer is that it is precisely for this reason that we DO moved into the sukkah. At times, some of us feel that we are in full control of our lives. We have our secure walls to protect us and we feel immune to the pain. We become smug; consumed by our successes and infatuated with self-worship.
In instructing us to leave the walls of a secure home in order to spend a week in a temporary and vulnerable structure, the Torah is attempting to inculcate within us the notion of how fragile we really are in this world. The sukkah is a call to sobriety, to remind us that at the end of the day we have little control over the most essential aspects of our lives.
Our large and fancy mansions, physical or conceptual, can be deceptive. They can give us the sense that we are on top of the world and that we are safe and secure. On Sukkot, we learn of the fragility of life; we discover the truth that all of us are really living in a vulnerable hut. On Sukkot, we become comfortable and secure in our vulnerability, knowing that the walls of this fragile hut are essentially the embrace of G‑d.
When we leave the walls of our stable homes, we begin to feel that we are living in the perpetual embrace of the divine." And that is what the sukkah is all about.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Raleigh Resnick
