 | To many moderns, Sukkot is a strange holiday. Our ancestral agricultural days that inspired the harvest festival are long gone. The threat of scarcity that inspired celebration for bounty feels distant in our relative affluence. And yet we are commanded – commanded! – to be joyful. What is joy if it's commanded, and what kind of command is that? |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Sukkot 5786
Hag sukkot sameah! / Happy Sukkot!
During Sukkot we're temporarily off the Torah cycle (which we'll reboot with a slightly early Simhat Torah at our Sukkot Shabbat of October 10). Yet Sukkot – Jewish fall festival of thanksgiving, z'man simhateinu / season of our joy – is very much a creature of our cycle.
In fact, Sukkot is Torah's most joyous of mitzvot, because joy is the point (Deut. 16;13-15):
Sukkot 5786
Hag sukkot sameah! / Happy Sukkot!
During Sukkot we're temporarily off the Torah cycle (which we'll reboot with a slightly early Simhat Torah at our Sukkot Shabbat of October 10). Yet Sukkot – Jewish fall festival of thanksgiving, z'man simhateinu / season of our joy – is very much a creature of our cycle.
In fact, Sukkot is Torah's most joyous of mitzvot, because joy is the point (Deut. 16;13-15):
| חַ֧ג הַסֻּכֹּ֛ת תַּעֲשֶׂ֥ה לְךָ֖ שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֑ים בְּאָסְפְּךָ֔ מִֽגַּרְנְךָ֖ וּמִיִּקְבֶֽךָ׃ וְשָׂמַחְתָּ֖ בְּחַגֶּ֑ךָ אַתָּ֨ה וּבִנְךָ֤ וּבִתֶּ֙ךָ֙ וְעַבְדְּךָ֣ וַאֲמָתֶ֔ךָ וְהַלֵּוִ֗י וְהַגֵּ֛ר וְהַיָּת֥וֹם וְהָאַלְמָנָ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר בִּשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ׃ שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֗ים תָּחֹג֙ לַיהו׳׳ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ בַּמָּק֖וֹם אֲשֶׁר־יִבְחַ֣ר יהו׳׳ה כִּ֣י יְבָרֶכְךָ֞ יהו׳׳ה אֱלֹהֶ֗יךָ בְּכֹ֤ל תְּבוּאָֽתְךָ֙ וּבְכֹל֙ מַעֲשֵׂ֣ה יָדֶ֔יךָ וְהָיִ֖יתָ אַ֥ךְ שָׂמֵֽחַ׃ | Make yourselves the Festival of Sukkot for seven days, for harvesting from your threshing floor and your vat. You will rejoice in your festival – you, your son and daughter, your male and female servant, the Levite, the stranger, the orphan and the widow in your gates. For seven days you will celebrate YHVH your God, in the place that YHVH will choose; because YHVH your God blessed all your crops and all your undertakings, and you will be so joyful. |
In ancient days when the harvest ensured survival for the year ahead, responding with total cellular joy was natural: we got to live! It was obvious to celebrate the Source of life, the Source of creation and nature's power to produce and regenerate. Sharing our joy and good fortune with others was easy.
Nowadays, when for most of us the harvest is a supermarket or online delivery service whenever we want – well, what's the big deal?
Which makes Sukkot a strange holiday for many moderns. And if a cellularly joyful harvest festival weren't seemingly Old School enough, to boot we have a kitschy sukkah hut of impermanence, and a lulav and etrog that make no modern sense at all.
Precisely so, Sukkot may be the most important holiday of all because the point Sukkot is joy itself. The destination of all these summer and autumn holidays – from Tisha b'Av through Elul to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – has been joy all along. All the introspection, sitting, standing, thinking, feeling, enduring, learning, truth telling and change making – it's all for the purpose of blasting us open and riveting us on the elemental joy at the hidden core of living.
It's worth repeating: JOY – not contentment, not satisfaction, not even gratitude, but the raw emotional power of peak happiness – a total, cellular reasonless joy for the joy of it. And not just an invitation to joy, but a command of joy.
The command is important, if counter-intuitive to our Western liberal ethos that we feel what we feel and emotions can't be commanded. After all, there are good reasons for not-joy. Yes, and Sukkot comes to make sure that we never lose our power to experience joy. There are times in every life when we need a jolt beyond ourselves, to break the inertia of ho-hum, so that we celebrate the good things in life. We need a jolt to live out loud.
Through that lens, Sukkot's traditions make a different kind of sense than their agricultural intentions. The sukkah – hut of flexibility and impermanence - reminds us that true spiritual joy needn't depend on rigidity or what lasts. We know from neurobiologists that special scents like the fragrant etrog – an almost otherworldly scent – bypass the rational mind and simultaneously help strengthen it. And who doesn't like a good party?
Celebrate. Celebrate life. Celebrate sukkot. L'hayyim!
Nowadays, when for most of us the harvest is a supermarket or online delivery service whenever we want – well, what's the big deal?
Which makes Sukkot a strange holiday for many moderns. And if a cellularly joyful harvest festival weren't seemingly Old School enough, to boot we have a kitschy sukkah hut of impermanence, and a lulav and etrog that make no modern sense at all.
Precisely so, Sukkot may be the most important holiday of all because the point Sukkot is joy itself. The destination of all these summer and autumn holidays – from Tisha b'Av through Elul to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – has been joy all along. All the introspection, sitting, standing, thinking, feeling, enduring, learning, truth telling and change making – it's all for the purpose of blasting us open and riveting us on the elemental joy at the hidden core of living.
It's worth repeating: JOY – not contentment, not satisfaction, not even gratitude, but the raw emotional power of peak happiness – a total, cellular reasonless joy for the joy of it. And not just an invitation to joy, but a command of joy.
The command is important, if counter-intuitive to our Western liberal ethos that we feel what we feel and emotions can't be commanded. After all, there are good reasons for not-joy. Yes, and Sukkot comes to make sure that we never lose our power to experience joy. There are times in every life when we need a jolt beyond ourselves, to break the inertia of ho-hum, so that we celebrate the good things in life. We need a jolt to live out loud.
Through that lens, Sukkot's traditions make a different kind of sense than their agricultural intentions. The sukkah – hut of flexibility and impermanence - reminds us that true spiritual joy needn't depend on rigidity or what lasts. We know from neurobiologists that special scents like the fragrant etrog – an almost otherworldly scent – bypass the rational mind and simultaneously help strengthen it. And who doesn't like a good party?
Celebrate. Celebrate life. Celebrate sukkot. L'hayyim!
RSS Feed