Rabbi's Message
RABBI’S MESSAGE:
The Booth that Symbolizes Modern Life
Even after so many years as a Rabbi, I still feel a tremendous sense of awe when I lead the congregation in Jewish ceremonies. This is because many of them have been done uninterruptedly for more than 3,000 years, originating in Biblical times.
A colorful example of this is occurring now at the synagogue. In Leviticus, as the Jewish People are commanded, for all time, to keep the Fall Festival of Booths, the following ordinance is laid out: "You shall dwell in booths for seven days ... that your generations may know that I made the Israelites to dwell in booths (in the wilderness) when I brought them out of the land of Egypt." (Leviticus 23:42-43). Following this admonition, each year we complete our Sukkah which reminds us of our ancestors’ desert dwellings. Prayers of thanksgiving are said in it and meals may be eaten therein. Indeed, during this festival week.
According to our sages, the Sukkah - with its certain dual nature - actually imparts much about life itself. On one hand, it has a temporary quality; it has to be taken apart and put together each year, or it is not a valid Sukkah according to Jewish Law. In the same way, so much of our lives is transitory - styles of clothing, music, fads, colloquial expressions, types of social gatherings. This is what, some years ago, the writer Alvin Toffler called "Future Shock," the "temporariness" in daily life.
Conversely, within the frail walls of the Sukkah there is permanence. Time-honored traditions are carried out within its walls. It's there that we voice Psalms of praise to God. We study Torah. This reminds us what holds our lives together, amid the fleetingness of so much around us.
Another writer, Louis J. Rabinowitz, speaks of "personal stability zones" - relationships we need with ongoing stable things. More than anything, it is our religiosity - our prayers and our Scriptural direction - which provides this. I recently read of a man who had to flee his home during the devastating fires in the Los Angeles area. He said, leaving almost everything behind, he took his faith with him. That was his mooring.
May the underlying permanence of the frail Sukkah - the rock of faith - truly be ours.
