Sukkot

Rabbi Barry H. Block

          Torah teaches: “You shall love in sukkot (booths) seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I the Eternal your God” (Leviticus 23:42-43).

          Scripture prescribes the essential mitzvah (religious obligation) of Sukkot, but leaves us wondering: What’s a Sukkah? And what does the Torah mean by telling us to “live in” it? For answers, we turn to our post-biblical sages, who taught that a Sukkah is a temporary dwelling, unprotected from the elements, where we are to take our meals and sleep throughout the festival.

Spending a week in the Sukkah, we recall that God provided shelter to our ancestors during their forty years of desert wanderings. If the weather is too cold—or, more likely here in Arkansas, too hot—we become aware that the physical shelter is unlike our more comfortable homes. When rain falls, we abandon the Sukkah for our homes—mindful that, like our our ancestors in the wilderness, too many of the world’s poor enjoy no such luxury. A Sukkah is a fitting temporary dwelling and a place for our most joyous celebration, but only because it is adjacent to a sturdy house or apartment.

In January 2011, I visited Haiti as part of an American Jewish World Service mission. A year after a devastating earthquake, I walked through a tent city, where tens of thousands of men, women, and children lived in dwelling with “walls” and “roofs” no stronger than the material that makes our garbage bags. Residents might stay dry in a light rain, but would be imperiled in a tropical storm, worse in a hurricane, an annual event there.

Dwelling in the Sukkah, let us commit ourselves to assuring better housing for the poor—in our own community, throughout the United States, and around the world—not only for one week of the year, but always.

Rabbi Barry H. Block serves Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas. He is the editor of The Mussar Torah Commentary, (CCAR Press, 2020), a Trustee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and the Rabbinic Dean of URJ Henry S. Jacobs Camp.