Sukkot has always been one of my favorite holidays. There is something that feels so joyful about Sukkot. It’s fun to decorate the Sukkah, it’s fun to sit in the Sukkah and eat with friends. It has so many tactile elements that really speak to me and feel so different than the rituals of other holidays. It might be because compared to the most recent holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it just feels less somber and complicated, and therefore it offers more of an invitation to just experience its joy. But I was thinking this year, maybe it’s precisely because of its proximity to the High Holidays that it feels so uncomplicated.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually love the High Holidays, but Sukkot definitely feels different in its nature. A Hasidic Rabbi known as the Sabba Kadisha of Slonim wrote the following:
On Sukkot, a Jew must begin their service to God anew with joy. He offers a parable: This is similar to a son of a king that ran away from his father the king, and later returned to him and to serving him. The king wasn’t fully at peace with his son because he was concerned that his son’s returning wasn’t sincere but rather only because he feared the king. Then, when the king saw that his son was serving him with joy and love, he knew that he had returned with his whole heart. This is the aspect of Sukkot.
This parable likens our experience moving from the High Holidays into Sukkot, to the son returning to his father the king. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are spiritually and emotionally intense. We are evaluating our lives and we want to do better. In the traditional, liturgical Jewish mind, the belief that God is deciding our fates may influence us to act out of fear rather than out of our own desires and sensibilities. But then we arrive at Sukkot. Sukkot is a reminder that our primary mode of service should be one of joy, one of love. The king in the parable is at peace when he realizes that the son isn’t motivated because of fear. He never wanted his son to act from that place.
On Sukkot, we aren’t meant to deal with complicated theology. We’re not meant to experience a God we’re afraid of. We are just asked to experience the beauty of the holiday, the joy that a festival offers us. I realized that this teaching also offers something important about the High Holidays. What God wants is our joy. God wants us to serve from joy and love and not from a place of fear. I feel such tremendous gratitude that our High Holiday services - serious and intense and imbued with so much meaning - also felt abundantly joyful. I hope that our Sukkot celebrations - whether here at the shul or in your own backyard sukkot - are beautiful, joyful, and full of love.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach, Rabbi Sarit
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