I imagine most of you didn’t go home last night after Ne’ila and build your Sukkah. Don’t worry, I didn’t either. Like many of you, I went home and scarfed a bagel after an incredibly meaningful and uplifting Yom Kippur. But the tradition actually teaches that right when Yom Kippur is over, we begin building our sukkot. My initial reaction to this teaching, to be honest, is one of exhaustion. We’ve just completed the marathon of the High Holy Days, and we don’t even get a break before having to move on to the next holiday?
I think the tradition purposefully wants to keep us from seeing a break between these holidays at all. Yes, of course, Sukkot is a separate and distinct holiday from Yom Kippur, but perhaps they are linked more than we realize. Yom Kippur is a holiday that requires our minds and our hearts to be actively engaged. We say lots of words and we engage in deep introspection all in the hope that it brings us closer to ourselves and to God. And then, we build a Sukkah where we actually play out these values in a physical way. The spiritual goals of Yom Kippur are made manifest in our own backyards on Sukkot. The Sukkah is a symbol of God’s protection, and after seeking that throughout the High Holy Days, we build it for ourselves. We’ve prayed for it, we’ve longed for it, and now, we make it true.
In that way, Sukkot isn’t so separate after all. It’s an extension of all the work that we’ve done on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and it’s an opportunity to maintain, in a very different way, the closeness with God we’ve created. It keeps us in a mode of holiness. While I’m not sure that on Saturday night or Sunday I will feel eager to pull out the ladder and the beams, I will be eager to stretch out that bit of holiness just a bit longer.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Sarit
Please click here to join our Shabbat morning service, live-streamed from our sanctuary at 9:15AM on Shabbat morning, or join us in person in the Sanctuary by signing up here.
