OCTOBER 13 • 2022 | 59
wealthy to buy yourself
the same leaves and fruit
that a billionaire uses in
worshipping God.
Living in the sukkah
and inviting guests to your
meal, you discover that the
people who have come to
visit you are none other
than Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob and their wives (such
is the premise of Ushpizin,
the mystical guests).
What makes a hut more
beautiful than a home
is that when it comes
to Sukkot there is no
difference between the
richest of the rich and
the poorest of the poor.
We are all strangers on
Earth, temporary residents
in God’s almost eternal
universe. And whether
or not we are capable of
pleasure, whether or not
we have found happiness,
nonetheless we can all feel
joy.
Sukkot is when we
ask the most profound
question of what makes a
life worth living. Having
prayed on Rosh Hashanah
and Yom Kippur to be
written in the Book of
Life, Kohelet forces us to
remember how brief life is
and how vulnerable.
“Teach us to number
our days that we may get
a heart of wisdom.” What
matters is not how long
we live, but how intensely
we feel that life is a gift we
repay by giving to others.
Joy, the overwhelming
theme of the festival, is
what we feel when we
know that it is a privilege
simply to be alive, inhaling
the intoxicating beauty of
this moment amidst the
profusion of nature, the
teeming diversity of life
and the sense of commu-
nion with those many oth-
ers who share our history
and our hope.
Most majestically of all,
Sukkot is the festival of
insecurity. It is the can-
did acknowledgment that
there is no life without
risk, yet we can face the
future without fear when
we know we are not alone.
God is with us, in the rain
that brings blessings to
the Earth, in the love that
brought the universe and
us into being, and in the
resilience of spirit that
allowed a small and vul-
nerable people to outlive
the greatest empires the
world has ever known.
Sukkot reminds us that
God’s glory was present
in the small, portable
Tabernacle Moses and the
Israelites built in the desert
even more emphatically
than in Solomon’s Temple
with all its grandeur. A
Temple can be destroyed.
But a sukkah, even if bro-
ken, can be rebuilt tomor-
row. Security is not some-
thing we can achieve physi-
cally but it is something we
can acquire mentally, psy-
chologically, spiritually. All
it needs is the courage and
willingness to sit under the
shadow of God’s sheltering
wings.
The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan
Sacks served as the chief rabbi of
the United Hebrew Congregations
of the Commonwealth, 1991-2013.
His teachings have been made
available to all at rabbisacks.org.
This essay was written in 2016.
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