By Rabbi Alexandra Wright
President of Liberal Judaism

What can one say that is new about this autumn festival of Sukkot?  Should we draw attention to the Torah reading for the first day of the festival (Leviticus 23:33-44): the designation of the full moon in the seventh month, the first and eighth days sacred occasions, the commandment to take the four species – the product of hadar trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and the instruction to live in sukkot for seven days?

Should we remind ourselves of the verse that transforms what was presumably an agrarian practice of building small huts in the fields during harvest time so families wouldn’t need to make the journey back home each night, into the remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt and the forty years spent into the wilderness – the genius of the biblical interpreter dramatising our own mythic past as Jews?  Should we perhaps see the sukkah, not as a literal tabernacle, but as ‘clouds of glory’ – a metaphor for God’s protection throughout the wilderness period.

Perhaps we should focus on the symbolism of the four species  – the likeness of each plant to a part of the human body: the spine, eyes, lips and heart? Or the qualities of each of the species: that just as the etrog has taste and fragrance, so there are in Israel people who are learned and strictly observant; like the lulav whose fruit has taste but no fragrance, there are those who are learned but are not fully practising; as the myrtle has fragrance but is tasteless, so there are people of good deeds but who possess no scholarship, and as the willow is neither edible nor of agreeable fragrance, so there are those who are neither learned nor possessed of good deeds.  And in one source, the midrash continues: ‘The Holy One says: So as to make it impossible for Israel to be destroyed, let all of them be bound together as plants are bound into a cluster, so that the righteous among them will atone for the others’ (Pesikta Rabbati 51:2).

Perhaps we should think about the movements we make when shaking the lulav and etrog together, honouring the Mishnaic dictum that one waves them to and fro in honour of God to whom the four directions belong, and up and down to acknowledge God to whom are heaven and earth (Sukkah 3:9).  Or we could reflect on the motion of shaking which is said to be done in a way that draws the species in towards ourselves, reaching out and in, just as we do when we draw the light of the Shabbat candles towards ourselves on Erev Shabbat.

We could reflect on the journey through the Tishri festivals and a saying by the Mezhibozher Rebbe who taught that the festivals in Tishri teach us to serve God with all our being. On Rosh Hashanah, we serve God with our minds, full of memories. On Yom Kippur we worship God with our hearts because fasting strains the heart. On Sukkot, we hold the etrog and lulav, using our hands in God’s service; and on Simchat Torah, we will praise God with our feet, as we process with joy, dancing with our Torah scrolls.

Another major theme on which we might focus during Sukkot is the universalism of the festival – seventy being the number of sacrifices that were offered in the week of Sukkot, associated with the seventy nations of the world.  It is a reminder that Israel is a part of humanity, that we are not alone on our journey or in our task.  Like all human beings, we are strangers on this earth, seeking shelter and sustenance, purpose and love.

Perhaps more relevant are the ethical teachings that emerge from our observance of Sukkot: it is the festival that commemorates both wandering and rest. We eat our meals, wrote Franz Rosenzweig, ‘not in the familiar rooms of the house but under a roof which is quickly constructed, a makeshift roof with heaven shining through the gaps.’ It is a symbol both of the fragility and transience of human life, but also of faith, hope and courage – for just as the stars shine through the roof of our Sukkah, so does our faith give us light even in our darkest hours.

Perhaps our focus should be on the kabbalistic custom of welcoming ushpizin into the Sukkah – guests in the form of our ancestors – women and men from the Tanakh or other eras of our history. Sukkot awakens us to the mitzvah of hospitality, not only in our own homes, in our own sukkahs, but in this country to those who wander and cannot rest, fleeing climate change or persecution, or who are trafficked illegally.  The universal nature of Sukkot allows us to think of the women and men without a permanent home, who lodge in hostels or sleep in the doorways of shop fronts; of children sleeping in temporary accommodation or hotels, where the windows don’t close properly, where there is damp and cockroaches; of people who are unable to cook for themselves, who must fetch their food from hotels where they are staying and carry it upstairs to their rooms, where there is no social engagement either for themselves or for their children.

Perhaps the lessons of Sukkot – spiritual, religious and ethical – lie in that little word which we read in the Torah portion for the first day of the festival: Ach ba-chamishah asar yom la-chodesh ha-sh’vi’i… ‘Ach – on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the yield of your land, you shall observe the festival of the Eternal One to last seven days…’  This word ach has only two letters and is used twice in this chapter, once to introduce Yom Kippur and once to introduce Sukkot.  It means anything from ‘surely’ to ‘no doubt’ to ‘howbeit’ to ‘yet’ or ‘but’ or ‘only.’  With reference to Yom Kippur, Rashi says this word serves to impose a limit. In other words, it has a restrictive force in the sense that Yom Kippur makes expiation for those who repent, but not for those who do not repent.

But where is the restriction in its introduction to the observances of Sukkot? Where is its emphasis?  This small word – ach – may instruct us to take something small into our hands, to build something fragile that may or may not endure.

There is nothing original or new in saying that redemption begins with small steps, with steps of faith that things can change for the better, providing we take them into our own hands and draw them continually to ourselves.