Sukkot is the Culmination

We are approaching the culmination of this season of the Days of Awe with the beginning of Sukkot on Wednesday night.  We began the season back in August with Tisha B'Av, a day of mourning the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem.  Tisha B'Av starts the season from the very depths of mourning, and becomes a paradigm for how we must acknowledge and mourn the decay and impermanence of all structures, all attempts at constructing perfect and lasting meaning and purpose.  Despite our best efforts, the structures of our lives will fall, like the Temple.

From the crumbled ruins of Tisha B'av, we traveled through the month of Elul for a time of figuring out  who we are where we are going.  On Rosh Hashana, we were roused awake by the call of the shofar and asked the questions: Whom have I hurt?  What do I make sovereign over my life?  How do I want to be remembered?  How might I see into my blind-spots?  We take the advice of Rebbe Nachman and read the holiday not as  ראש השנה (Rosh Hashana, literally: "Head of the Year") but rather as the command: שנה את הראש ("Shane et haRosh", "Change your head!").  On Rosh Hashana we allow for the possibility that we can change.

During the Ten Days of Teshuva (the time in between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) we intensify the process of recalibrating and turning, and focus on shifting--even subtly-- how we perceive and act.  Finally, we reach Yom Kippur, a surreal day of fasting and prayer in which we face with naked honesty the truths of our lives.  We acknowledge that we have hurt others, we have acted stubbornly, angrily-- we have been small and constricted.  Additionally, we look directly at the difficult reality of our own mortality.  On Yom Kippur, we achieve a "small death."  Through this small death, all that is not essential is seen for what it is, and we find ourselves prepared to "choose life so that you may live" (Deut. 30:19).  But Yom Kippur is not the end.
 

We arrive at Sukkot a mere four days after Yom Kippur, and we begin by responding to the essential question of Yom Kippur, perhaps given voice by the Torah reading we read on Yom Kippur morning: Acharei Mot/ After Death-- then what?  Sukkot responds to that question with action: we build.  On Sukkot we acknowledge that everything we build is impermanent.  Yet, build we must.  We conclude the season with a festival that bookends the entire season by acknowledging the impermanence of our structures-- and situation-- but instead of responding with mourning or despair (like on Tisha B'Av), we are ready to build a life and rejoice in it.  This is Zman Simchateinu, the Time of our Rejoicing, and it is a time of building lives of engagement that are guided by hope and meaning.  

On Sukkot, we finally understand that we will forever live lives of disappointment if we insist that life  has meaning only in the accomplishment of solid goals.  If we believe that we can only be happy if we solve all problems, or get rid of that person or issue, if we could only succeed in all of our relentless struggles to solve, fix, build, or grasp onto; then we could be happy.  This season reminds us that we do not know what is coming tomorrow-- or even in the next breath.  We could allow ignore this reality completely, or we could obsess on it and become parallyzed.  Or, we could find ourselves in the orientation of Sukkot-- a time in which we allow for different levels of truth to operate simultaneously:  everything (including me) is impermanent, and, I am incredibly powerful to act and find meaning.

On Yom Kippur we tell the truth, on Sukkot we act on it.  We build a sukkah that is beautiful, but that can be blown over in a strong wind, and that has a roof that must leak if it rains.  We sit in the sukkah and rejoice over the blessed lives that we live.  Our hearts feel full because we know that despite our ample limitations as human beings, we are astonishingly powerful and moreover, we are empowered to build a world that is as good as we can possibly make it--without thinking that it can ever be finally completed or perfected.  "You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it."(Pirke Avot 2:21). 

We feel a deep contentment as we feel home in our sukkot-- our lives, bodies and minds.  We smile as the rain drips in our soup (see Alan Lew's chapter in This is Real on Sukkot).  We have come a long way from Tisha B'Av.

Chag Sameach,

Jordan