There is something wonderfully welcoming - and yet incredibly weak - about a sukkah.
As the late Rabbi Alan Lew put it in his 2009 classic This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, “The idea of a house is that it gives us security, shelter, haven from the storm. But no house can really offer this. No building of wood and stone can ever afford us protection from the disorder that is always lurking all around us. No shell we put between us and the world can ever really keep us secure from it.” That’s why, on Sukkot, we “sit in a house that is only the idea of a house, a house that calls attention to the illusory nature of all houses.”
Into this shaky-walled, gap-filled structure, one that a strong wind and a little rain could easily ruin, we invite people in. That’s because Sukkot is a seven day masterclass in the forgotten yet timeless teaching that vulnerability and hospitality can live under the same roof.
One of the oldest Sukkot traditions is called Ushpizin, an Aramaic word meaning “guests.” Each night, we symbolically invite a different Jewish ancestor into our sukkah: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David. Some traditions also include the great women of our story, including Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Miriam, Esther and Deborah.
But why are we inviting people ... who lived thousands of years ago ... to dinner ... in our flimsy, temporary, outdoor dwelling?
Around a hundred years ago, the English writer and philosopher GK Chesterton noted that the most robust of democracies are those in which the no-longer-living still have their voices heard. “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors,” he observed. “It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
While Chesterton wasn’t a member of the tribe himself, his observation reflects a profound truth about our faith: Judaism doesn’t believe the past is finished with us. Our ancestors may be gone, but their questions, mistakes, courage, failures, faith and ideas are still sitting at our table.
- Abraham, the first Jew, reminds us what it means to leave the familiar behind and welcome the stranger.
- Isaac, his successor, reminds us what it means to receive a tradition and carry it forward.
- Jacob, whose life powered through battles both within and beyond his family, teaches perseverance.
- Joseph, sold into slavery by his siblings, teaches forgiveness.
- Moses reminds us of the transformational power of Torah learning.
- His brother Aaron, history’s first High Priest, brings forward a model of service to God.
- David, the legendary shepherd-poet-king, gives us the spiritually sublime poetry of the Psalms.
- Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Miriam, Esther and Deborah model courage, resilience, leadership, creativity and the power to shape a Jewish future.
These renowned figures of our textual tradition are beckoned into our humble abode as festival guests and teachers of fortitude and faith in Hashem. When we invite them into our sukkah, we also remind ourselves that we are guests in the Jewish story, too. The Torah did not begin with us, and it will not end with us.
We live in a moment when it is easy to imagine that everything began yesterday, that the latest idea, technology, trend or argument is automatically the most important thing we have ever encountered. Judaism offers a different instinct: Look back. Listen. Wrestle with what came before.
You don't have to agree with your ancestors to learn from them. In fact, Judaism practically guarantees that you won't agree with all of them. But they get a seat at the table. By asking us to hold in our hands a plurality of perspectives from the past, we are inspired to see a more pluralistic, collaborative society.
The Ushpizin, of course, are not the only guests in the sukkah. Anyone who does not invite newcomers, particularly the poor, orphans, widows, and strangers to their festive holiday meals, is not participating in a divine commandment and is merely rejoicing in their own stomach, wrote the renowned medieval sage Maimonides.
By creating the sukkah-space different from all others, we achieve a pause from our hyperconnected every-day. We do so not to completely shut out others, but to invite them into a place of mutual repose and joyous celebration, in a spiritual shelter of tranquility whose walls contain characters from our past and figures who will constitute our communal future.
We eat together with others, both familiar and new. We tell stories. We sing. We welcome friends and family. We make room for the stranger. We invite our ancestors. We celebrate Torah, the living conversation that has connected generation to generation for thousands of years.
By asking us to brave the elements as the weather grows cold, Sukkot asks us to cultivate a mentality in which we prepare for what cannot be prepared for, in which we build the courage to be antifragile through learning from alternate perspectives and delving deeply into the wellspring of our past and the wisdom of those we can continue to learn from.
If you've never celebrated Sukkot before, then, consider this your invitation. You don't have to build the perfect sukkah. You don't need to know every prayer. You don't even have to know what you're doing.
Just be a guest.
Find a sukkah. Sit inside. Have something to eat. Look up through the roof. Listen to a story. Ask who came before you and what they might have to teach you. If you are lucky enough to own or rent your own, invite someone else in.
The sukkah's walls may be fragile. But there is room inside for thousands of years of Torah, an extraordinary cast of ancestors, and one more guest: you.
Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern serves as the senior advisor to the provost as well as the deputy director and chief strategy officer of the Zahava and Moshael J. Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University. He is the editor or author of nineteen books, including Jewish Roots of American Liberty: The Impact of Hebraic Ideas on the American Story and the upcoming Two Nations Under God: How (Biblical) Israel Inspires America, both of which received a National Endowment for the Humanities grants. Among his other books are The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada, Esther in America and Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.
