Holy Days Archive

Welcome to CLAL Holy Days, the place where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on upcoming Jewish holidays.

Our authors are especially interested in hearing your responses to what they have written. So after reading, you should click and go to CLAL Holy Days Talk where you can join the conversation with CLAL faculty and other readers.

To access ARCHIVED HOLY DAY COMMENTARIES, click here.

To join the conversation at CLAL Holy Days Talk, click here.

SUKKOT

Sukkot commemorates no single event. Rather, it attempts to capture the feeling of fragility and pain which our people endured as they wandered through the desert. The sukkah we build, a temporary and inadequate dwelling place, allows us to experience a life buffeted by rain and cold or unbearable heat. The rabbis asked, 'Why retain a memory of painful moments?' Rashbam tells us that Sukkot is fixed during the ingathering of the corn and wine, "that people should not be guilty of pride in their well-stocked houses." Isaac Arama adds: "We go like a poor person into a tiny booth which contains but the meal for one day and usually nothing more than a bed, table, chair and lamp."

The mitzvah of sitting in a sukkah is not simply a reconstruction of the past, but a reminder of the present world in which we live. It is as if the tradition anticipated Jewish wealth and created a prophylactic mechanism to jog our memory and sensitize our souls to the suffering around us. The Torah notes that the Ammonites and Moabites refused to provide us with water and bread when we were starving in the desert. The Torah forbids us to be like them. Maimonides tells us: One should not restrain the hands of the poor non-Jew in gathering the gleanings, forgotten sheaves, and corners of the field .... All for the sake of peace.

To fulfill the mitzvah of sitting in a fragile sukkah, we must act upon the awareness of human need and emulate God in the desert by providing all human beings with the dignity of food and shelter.

(David Elcott)

To join the conversation at CLAL Holy Days Talk, click here.

To access ARCHIVED HOLY DAY COMMENTARIES, click here.