Sukkot: Dwelling in Vulnerability, Choosing Life

This language — “enemies of the Jews” — still sounds foreign to me. I remember hearing my grandparents’ stories of antisemitism, filed away in my mind as history, never expecting that I would hear the same from people my children’s age. It reminds me that we cannot allow our trauma to define us. We must carry it, but we must also move forward. Our ancestors did. We must too. Now is our time.

Sukkot beckons us to embrace that forward movement. It is more than a year after October 7th, and our complicated task is not to live defined within the sorrow of that day. Rather, we live with it, remembering, witnessing, demanding justice, and consciously affirming life. Yom Kippur reminds us of death, but we do not live our lives in Yom Kippur. Sukkot, in contrast, teaches us to live with open hearts and open hands, under the fragile shelter of a sukkah, a frail temporary structure built beyond the safer, more permanent structure of the homes we are blessed to typically inhabit.

I’ve always loved the paradox of Sukkot. This holiday, with its palm fronds and strange rituals, reminds us of our beauty and strangeness as a people. We dwell in a flimsy hut and shake a lulav in six directions — an act both humble and profound. We declare to the world, “I am here, vulnerable yet determined, sheltered yet exposed.”

In these moments, we connect deeply to the reality of our existence: nothing lasts. The sukkah itself, with its temporary roof, teaches us that permanence is an illusion. As my teacher, Rabbi Neil Gillman of blessed memory, taught, a sukkah is all we get in this world. It is not a fortress. It is permeable, fragile — just like us. And yet, in its fragility, it carries a profound lesson: we must protect ourselves and each other — and our fragile world.

As we stand in this moment, still carrying the weight of the past year, I find myself yearning for — and demanding from Heaven — a little sukkah of protection, a shelter of grace, even one that lasts a moment or two. After the year we’ve had, even the most gossamer of shelters would be a blessing. May this year bring more joy, more love, and dare I say, moments of peace. The world, and Am Yisrael, surely need it.

I’m finishing my sukkah today. It’s not large, but there’s room for all of us, those we’ve lost and those yet to enter the world. Let us build and enter this holiday of Sukkot together, praying for better days, demanding the return of our family, still held captive. We will never be done hoping. October 7th will always live within us, but we will also live. We must. And as we dwell in our sukkot, may we be blessed with life. With life.

With every breath, may we let in the blessing of the sukkah — the blessing of shelter, of vulnerability, and of love.