Looking back at The Sukkot Season

The festive season has come to an end. While the mitzvot associated with Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah have now passed, we are still left with many thoughts, feelings and memories to process. The month of Mar Cheshvan, which will soon be upon us, provides an ideal opportunity for reflection, introspection and contemplation of the impact that Tishrei and its momentous occasions have made on us.

Here, in the first of three post-Sukkot items on the blog that look back to last week's festivities, we bring a short and colourful YouTube clip by our member Heshy Engelsberg, "The Sukkot Season", which succinctly captures the atmosphere in the streets of Jerusalem when our beautiful and eternal capital goes into celebratory mode. 

You can click through to "The Sukkot Season" here.

Deflation and inspiration -- where physicality balances the spirit: Sukkot 5785

We often experience a feeling of spiritual deflation immediately after we emerge from the exalted atmosphere of Yom Kippur. To plunge directly into the icy waters of  everyday life is a very challenging task. We have just been given an entire day to nurture our souls, to exist as angels without the need to fulfill the requirements of our bodies. So the Lord, so to speak, allows us a more gradual descent into our physical, everyday lives. We are asked to forgo the creature comforts of our homes for a period of time, to dwell in a sukkah, exposed to the heavens and the natural world. 

The sukkah, like Yom Kippur itself, is a place of the soul and not of the body. This is because, no matter how elaborate and luxurious we attempt to make it, the sukkah remains a temporary and exposed environment. While the body is aware of this situation and is somewhat discomforted by it, the soul revels in it. It is in this way that the soul clings on to the last vestiges of Yom Kippur right through to Hoshanah Rabbah, before our bodies return to dominate our lives. 

The day of Hoshanah Rabbah is considered as a High Holy Day in its own right and not merely a regular day of Chol HaMoed.  Though none of the restrictions of Yom Kippur are imposed on that festive day or throughout any of the joyous days that follow the first day of the Chag, the spiritual atmosphere of Yom Kippur is still present, for we are living amongst holy clouds and not in physically strong structures. 

Jews the world over are willing to spend sizeable amounts of money in the fulfillment of the commandments of the holiday of Sukkot. We are all aware that the price of a lemon, an orange or any other citrus fruit at the local greengrocer is of little consequence to us. Not so the price of an etrog! It is not the fruit itself that makes it so valuable to so many. It is our ability to fulfill the will of God through an etrog – itself a gift of God’s bounty – that makes it so valuable as to be almost priceless. 

The physical instruments that we use throughout our lives are a means through which our souls connect to our Creator. Just as the value of an etrog lies in what lies behind it–- in what it represents and who ordained its use on the holiday of Sukkot -- would that we would view everything in life, all of our goods and possessions, friends and families and our society generally, with such a perspective. 

In essence, that is the basis of Jewish thought and the moral code of the Torah. On Yom Kippur we spurn physicality; on Sukkot we learn to use physicality to help to connect us to our Creator. And it is that spirit of understanding our role in this world of eternal values that truly occasions within us the joy and happiness that radiates from the holiday of Sukkot. 

Chag Same’ach, Rabbi Berel Wein