Sukkot encourages us to discover a Jewish world beyond our comfort zones, and show that we can be happy even without material things 

Rabbi Adam Cutler
Beth Tzedec Congregation, Toronto

Rabbi Adam Scheier
Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, Montreal

Rabbi Scheier: I love decorating my sukkah. My children make the requisite paper-link chains and wall decorations, and we adorn the walls of the sukkah with posters that depict great chassidic rebbes, scenes of Jerusalem and other iconic Jewish images.  

One of my favourite posters brings a mishnah to life: “Yehuda ben Taima said, be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer, and strong as a lion to the will of your Father in Heaven.” The poster depicts each of these animals in their respective boldness, lightness, swiftness, and strength. The objective is that one who enters the sukkah will be surrounded by wisdom and inspiration.

Rabbi Cutler: Most people don’t get excited when the new Jewish calendar arrives in the mail from their insurance broker. Yet, my family’s tradition was to use the pictures from the calendar to cover the walls in our sukkah. The physical structure was always the same, but the decorations changed from year to year (though paper chains, newly made, were always a staple). 

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of decorating the sukkah, and I vividly recall helping my father shlep the wooden frame from the garage and spending what seemed like hours putting them together in our backyard. 

Sukkot today doesn’t seem as cold as it did 25 years ago – perhaps global warming is to blame. I recall being bundled into my ski jacket, hat and gloves, and warming myself with my mother’s mushroom barley soup.

Rabbi Scheier: There is a great teaching of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach about Neilah, the closing prayer of Yom Kippur, which literally means “locking” and traditionally describes the closing of the gates of prayer before the conclusion of Yom Kippur.  

Rabbi Carlebach taught that our prayers can’t only be, “God, don’t lock me out!” They also have to be, “God, don’t lock me in!” Meaning, don’t lock me into the synagogue and relegate my spiritual experience to the confines of our Jewish institutions. Let me meander outside and see how my Jewish experience interacts with the world beyond my synagogue. 

To me, this is the message of Sukkot. It’s an encounter with a world beyond our comfort zone. While we build all of these structures, edifices, and organizations to ease and facilitate our Jewish lives, our Judaism is deep and real – it can survive outside of our familiar communal and structural contexts.

I also believe the sukkah contains some of the joys of new discovery. We look around, taking in all that is unfamiliar (and perhaps even a bit uncomfortable). The cold, the branches overhead, the bees (when the weather is warm), the chairs perched on an angle because our driveway or backyard is sloped – all of these aspects combine to create a novel experience.  

Once again, we are youthful as we explore this different, transient world – it is wonderful and amazing and new. There is an exciting element of discovery when setting up camp in a new location, even if that location is on one’s own property.

Rabbi Cutler: Don Isaac Abravanel points out that on Passover and Shavuot, the Jews who flocked to Jerusalem were permitted to leave after only one day to return to their homes and their crops. Not so for Sukkot, during which all Jews were required to stay in Jerusalem for seven days. Sukkot marked the end of the growing season. The farmer could take a little time off without worrying that she or he was needed back in the fields.

Among the messages of Sukkot is that we should be happy. Sukkot is “zman simchateinu,” the time of our joyfulness. It is a time to be outdoors and remind ourselves that even without many material things, we can be happy. It is a time when we should be with families and communities, just as our ancestors were in Jerusalem.

Especially for rabbis in the immediate aftermath of our “busy season,” Sukkot is a great time to appreciate nature, to read outdoors, to study for the sake of study, to eat, to relax, and to spend quality time with family and friends.