Sukkot
Sukkot is truly one of my favourite holidays, not just because of how meaningful and rich its imagery and rituals are, but also because I have so many great family memories surrounding it. Growing up, the day after Yom Kippur, exhausted from leading services all day, my dad would get us going on building our sukkah in the back yard. While most of my experience with hurricanes came from my time in Florida, there was a time when we lived up north that a hurricane buzzed by us. Our sukkah had fabric walls and, inconsiderately, the strong winds mistook them for sails, lifting up our sukkah and slamming it to the ground where it broke into pieces.
We didn’t take much time to mourn. The next day, we got our tools and built the sukkah again. We could have easily left it on the ground, but the sukkah is important to my family. Like the Jewish people, when something we love is destroyed, whether from hate, violence, or simply negligence, we rebuild. It’s simply what we do.
Jews have been subject to destructive forces for the vast majority of our history, but we understand that our purpose on this earth is to repair and renew. We rebuild the sukkah knocked down by the wind. We heal and nourish the community that has been torn by hatred. And we seek to reunite a world broken by greed and prejudice. At this Sukkot, we will build and rebuild because we know that, even though our work is never done, our purpose is in continuing the work, every day bringing this world closer to the world of kindness and justice that God wants us to create.
We didn’t take much time to mourn. The next day, we got our tools and built the sukkah again. We could have easily left it on the ground, but the sukkah is important to my family. Like the Jewish people, when something we love is destroyed, whether from hate, violence, or simply negligence, we rebuild. It’s simply what we do.
Jews have been subject to destructive forces for the vast majority of our history, but we understand that our purpose on this earth is to repair and renew. We rebuild the sukkah knocked down by the wind. We heal and nourish the community that has been torn by hatred. And we seek to reunite a world broken by greed and prejudice. At this Sukkot, we will build and rebuild because we know that, even though our work is never done, our purpose is in continuing the work, every day bringing this world closer to the world of kindness and justice that God wants us to create.
Moadim l’simchah,
Rabbi Michael Weiss