Dvar Torah for Sukkot

Jewish rituals have an elegant way of bringing the past and future together simultaneously in a simple moment. This makes Judaism especially adaptable to different places and conditions — an important trait during this year in particular. Sukkot is a beautiful case study; the Torah commands us to “dwell in a sukkah for seven days.” Then, in something of a rarity for the Torah, it goes on to explain why this commandment is important, and it’s particularly clear and direct:

[All Israel should live in sukkot for seven days] in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I the LORD your God. (Vayikra 23:42-43) Anthropologists studying rituals in cultures around the world have noted the tendency of many such experiences to symbolically bring the past and future together in the present, but some have identified Judaism as a culture that does this more stridently than most. We not only recall or symbolically invoke our past — we literally relive it, by moving out of our houses and into the very sukkot that our ancestors inhabited in the wilderness on their way to Israel. We not only tell these stories to our children to provide for the Jewish future — we involve them in the doing, thereby ensuring it. The Torah knew that the best way to learn is by doing — I see that every day with my Middle School engineering students — and this approach is baked into our religious observances.

Much of the discussion of Jewish holidays since March has focused on what we’ve lost to this year’s circumstances. On Sukkot, that most often means guests; hosting and visiting are beloved parts of Sukkot in my family. But while those elements are important, they are not the core. When I stand in a sukkah, or sit down to a seder, or learn late into the night on Shavuot, I get this incredible sensation of time telescoping across thousands of years and miles, infinite corridors stretching forward and back connecting me to all Jews as the past, the present, and the future converge. I feel humbled and powerful all at once. The experience doesn’t depend on being in any particular place or with any particular people. It comes from the power of our holidays, and from the resilience that allows them to be a gateway to wondrous moments in even the most unusual of circumstances.

Chag Sameach.