A Sukkah Transformation

We talked a lot over the High Holidays about boiling down our holidays to their essential messages. What is Rosh Hashanah all about? What is the main theme of Yom Kippur? Sometimes in the shuffle of the holiday season, between praying, fasting, singing, discussing, and eating, it can be hard to find time to really reflect on what this whole High Holiday thing is all about.





But what about Sukkot? Is there more to this holiday than just setting up a canvas-walled booth, decorating it with plastic fruit and drawings the kids made 10 years ago, and sitting in it? Sure, we're reminding ourselves of the Exodus from Egypt, when the Israelites lived in these huts (though probably without the plastic fruit...), but what else can we take away from this holiday?

I would like to reflect on a commonality between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, and I think this might help answer the question. Yom Kippur teaches us a little about human frailty, and how we start to get weak, sluggish, irritable, and cranky after only missing one or two meals! Fasting shows us how dependent we are on food and drink, and gives us a brief moment to realize how vulnerable we really are. This should hopefully also compel us to feel compassion for those who truly lack food, and who feel that hunger all the time. How can we hold onto our experiences at Yom Kippur and become better, more caring and socially aware people in the year to come?

Similarly, I think Sukkot teaches us about human frailty as well. We are meant to eat, sleep, and live outside in rickety huts for eight days, to remind us of the Israelites in the desert. But it also forces us to confront our own dependence on heat, the almighty coffee maker, and a soft bed. One week without these creature comforts and we're a mess. Most of us only venture out into the Sukkah for a couple of meals during Sukkot, too scared to get too close to our own vulnerability. And again, this should challenge us to reach out to those less fortunate, who spend their whole lives in Sukkot, and who lack the amenities we cannot imagine our lives without.

The main purpose of the holidays is indeed to affect an internal change, but one that will force us to look outside ourselves and seek to improve the world around us. Yom Kippur may have ended, but the holidays go on, and so do the messages we are meant to take with us. This season, how can we let ourselves be transformed, so that we will become better people, and so that others will benefit from our transformation as well.

Chag Sameach!