On Wednesday night, in the pouring rain, Abe and I attempted to hoist our schach, the branches that sit atop the sukkah, back onto the structure. The strong winds of that day had strewn them all around our yard, and we were hoping to have the Sukkah functional by Thursday morning. We did what we could, and, sopping wet, we stood inside the sukkah to see if most of the ceiling was indeed covered with schach. We laughed at ourselves in the moment (was there any other response?) - soaking wet, throwing branches on top of a metal frame in our backyard. It wasn’t fully covered - a few of the corners were pretty bare - but it was good enough.
We were reminded, as we walked back into the house, that the laws around having a kosher sukkah actually speak to this experience. Though we are taught to sit under shade created by the schach, if some parts of the sukkah aren’t covered, it’s still a kosher sukkah. This feels entirely counterintuitive to me, particularly in the context of a tradition so highly regulated with rules and details. Not having the sukkah fully covered doesn’t invalidate the whole thing and make it not-kosher. The sukkah can still be functional - beautiful, even - even if it’s not perfect, even with some parts that aren’t ideal.
How do we engage with the mitzvah of sitting in a sukkah if part of it is invalid? We sit under the shade. We make the ideal part the primary experience, not dwelling on (or in!) the part that doesn’t work for us, but engaging with the part that does. This is true about the sukkah but it’s also true for us. To me, this resonantes especially in thinking about our connection to Jewish tradition and ritual.
How can I do something when it doesn’t feel perfect or perfectly right for me? How can I engage with something if I know that I’m not going to get it perfectly right? The Sukkah reminds us that perfectly right isn’t the point. It only has to be right enough. Like the schach on the sukkah, it’s ok to sit under the part that does work for you, even if that’s not the whole thing. For someone saying kaddish who can’t make it to every minyan but comes once every few weeks, that’s right enough. When we haven’t always got the time for a full Shabbat dinner, lighting candles may be right enough. In Shabbat morning services, the whole corpus of the siddur may be too much for you to focus on but one prayer to meditate on is right enough.
This Shabbat of chol hamoed Sukkot, I hope we can each can internalize the Torah of the schach. We don’t have to be able to sit in every place in the sukkah. There is a corner of the sukkah for each of us to sit in, a place where each of us can dwell.
