For a Rabbi, the High Holy Days season is a blur of writing, planning, programming, and gathering. It’s all wonderful – and all important – but it can be a lot. Now that Sukkot 5787 is past, I am taking a moment to breathe and reflect on what a joyous week we shared at Temple Menorah.
Sukkot is called “Z’man Simchateinu” – the Season of our Joy. It was an amazing week here at Temple Menorah. Our JLL families and community members joined together to construct our sukkah. Under the guidance of the awesome Francisco, we danced among piles of palm fronds and zip-ties, working together to build the beautiful hut, in which our community met in the following week.
In our sukkah, we held Shabbat services, JLL, and Tichon classes. I shook the lulav and smelled the scent of the etrog with the Tuvia Preschoolers and Faculty. Our adults sipped Smoothies and Sangria; we chatted about the upcoming year of activities and programming.
It was, literally and symbolically, a harvesting of our finest fruits – the fruits of our labors, the fruits of our children’s faces, the fruits of just being together.
A sukkah is only kosher if it affords its inhabitants views of the outside world: the nature around us and the starry skies above. The openings are portals of hospitality – welcome to join us for food, comfort, and shelter. But there is a bi-directionality to these openings. Not only are people invited in, but we must look out to acknowledge that just on the other side of the doorway, there are those who do not have a harvest to glean, who do not have enough food to share, who lack family, friends, or community with whom to dwell.
Let us carry the reminders that Sukkot has gifted to us. Even with the physical walls of our sukkah packed away for the year, may we continue to soak in the nature, continue to peer up at the stars, and continue our welcome and our care for those who need us more than ever.
