Parashat Sukkot Day Six
Exodus 33:12–34:26 and Numbers 29:23–31
This week’s commentary was written by Rabbi Ayelet Cohen (RS ’02), Director, The Center for Jewish Living at The JCC in Manhattan.
Immediately on the heels of the intense spiritual
work of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Sukkot challenges us to turn our lives
inside out again, this time quite literally. The Talmud tells us that for the
duration of Sukkot we must leave our permanent dwellings and reside in temporary
dwellings (BT Sukkah 2b). By its very nature, the sukkah must feel temporary; we
must experience the elements in a way that we do not when we are at home. By
leaving the comfort and protection of our homes, making the temporary permanent
and the permanent temporary for the duration of the holiday, we are more
vulnerable and thus more open. We are able to meet the intention of tze ul’mad from the Passover seder, and, like the
Israelites in the wilderness, in that interstitial space have the opportunity to
experience revelation.
We are commanded to “rejoice on the festival,”
leading us to think of the holidays as a time of family gathering and
celebration: our closest friends and families crowded around an overflowing
table. But the Rambam challenges us to go further, reframing our interpretation
of celebrating the bounty of the holiday.
When one eats and drinks one must also feed the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, along with all other poor and destitute. But one who locks the gates of one’s courtyard, and eats and drinks with one’s own family but does not feed the poor and disheartened, is not rejoicing in the commandment, rather rejoicing in one’s own belly. (Mishnah Torah Hilchot Yom Tov 6:18)
Especially on Sukkot, when we experience more than
at any other time of the year what it means to be vulnerable to the elements, we
must push ourselves to share our bounty with those who are disenfranchised and
those who have no food or no homes. For far too many people, home is always
fragile, and vulnerability is a permanent state. The12th-century scholar Rabbi
Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) believed that Sukkot helped reinforce the fact that
our wealth and comfort is a gift from God.
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