Succoth: plurals

 

Succoth: plurals

 

We call the חַ֧ג chag, the holiday, that starts today succoth, shelters. The Torah gives it this name:

דַּבֵּ֛ר אֶל־בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל לֵאמֹ֑ר בַּחֲמִשָּׁ֨ה עָשָׂ֜ר י֗וֹם לַחֹ֤דֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִי֙ הַזֶּ֔ה חַ֧ג הַסֻּכּ֛וֹת שִׁבְעַ֥ת יָמִ֖ים לַי

 

Say to the Israelite people: On the fifteenth day of this seventh month there shall be the Feast of Booths

 

The word is presented as plural. The simplest understanding is that a large number of people need a large number of independent dwellings.  Every family  resides in its temporary home. Most of the details of construction and furnishing are not specified; variety flourishes.

This evokes the vision of Bilaam, hired to curse Israel, he sings their praises instead. The most famous of  his statements is

מַה־טֹּ֥בוּ אֹהָלֶ֖יךָ יַעֲקֹ֑ב מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶ֖יךָ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

How fair are your tents, O Jacob,
Your dwellings, O Israel!

 

Rashi sends us to Bava Bathra   60a  for the interpretation

 

מה טבו אהליך. עַל שֶׁרָאָה פִתְחֵיהֶם שֶׁאֵינָן מְכֻוָּנִין זֶה מוּל זֶה:

 

מה טבו אהליך

 HOW GOODLY ARE THY TENTS — He said this because he saw that the entrances of their tents were not exactly facing each other (Bava Batra 60a; cf. v. 2).

 

Bilaam praised the respect for privacy that the Israelites afforded one another.  One recites this line when entering the beith hamedrash, the study hall, the combination of private and public study, where breakthroughs may be made in private or in small groups, and shared publicly.

 

The camps: concentration camps: Displaced persons camps, illegal immigrant camps, homeless shelters … these are the antithesis of this observation of praise. The loss of privacy, and hence dignity was, and is, an important part of the cruelty of tyrants.  Succoths are a step toward liberation and a return to blessings of quiet peace.

 

The Shulchan aruch, the distillation of text and tradition into action and law, opens its section on sukkot in an unusual way. It quotes and interprets the verses that are the basis of the celebration.  Usually, the Shulchan aruch confines itself to the actions that are prescribed or forbidden.  Here, it provides the motivation.

 

בסוכות תשבו שבעת ימים וגו' כי בסוכות הושבתי את בני ישראל הם ענני כבוד שהקיפם בהם לבל יכם שרב ושמש:

 

On Succot we shall dwell for 7 days etc. Because on Succot I protected the children of Israel. These refer to the clouds of glory who protected them from all the intense heat and the sun of the desert.

 

 

We are told not to take the verse at face value ( Rashi , Onkelos say likewise). It says that we should not understand sukkot literally as flimsy, temporary shelters.  Rather it means that the journey through the desert was made possible by divine intervention.

 

I like to bring it back to the literal. It is only by the Divine intervention that the Israelites could survive despite their flimsy dwellings. Ordinarily conditions in the wilderness through which the Israelites  traveled are too harsh to survive in such rickety structures.  Thus, the fact that they did prevail, with nothing more significant to protect them from the harsh sun – and all the other adversities of the desert- is a testament that the sukkot were not the real shield; the clouds of glory were the real protection.

 We, who are aware of natural disasters that occur around the world, should realize that no one is exempt from potential natural disaster. This supports a world view that Succoth recommends: our continued comfortable lives are supported by Divine decisions on a day to day basis, no matter what material your house is made from.

Succoth is also a pleural holiday in terms of the evolution of the structures this word designates. For a long time, my wife Karen had a dream of a deck off the kitchen where we could sit outside, with a view of the lake and the trees, and have our morning coffee. We would just have to step outside the house and we would be on this wonderful deck. We knew that the deck would change the placement of our sukkah. The deck covers the narrow corridor where we used to place our sukkah before the deck invalidated that space. 

The old sukkah was on the bottom of the hill that our house is built upon. It was submerged.  We used to call it the bunker sukkah. It was dark and  a little hidden.  It was a sukkah that reminded me of my parents, and how they lived in a hole in the ground, covered by leaves and bushes, by schach, for a year during the holocaust in Poland.  More importantly, that sukkah reminded Karen and our children of that experience. That sukkah was haunted by the spirits of my parents and the millions of spirits that they represented, that vast majority of whom were not as fortunate. A kind os holocaust Ushpizin.

Now we have an easily set up sukkah on that new deck.  We have brackets into which we insert metal pole that have grooves for poles from which we hang the tarp and then we cover it with bamboo.  This is an American sukkah, an easy, convenient suckah. 

We live in Seward Park. There are all kinds of sukkot.  Years ago, the best sukkot in the neighborhood were designed by the Katzman brothers.  That tradition is past, but the number of sukkot increases every year as Jews become more comfortable with publicly displaying  their bizarre appearing traditions publicly.  Is this the undoing of our bunker sukkah?

Over time the sukkah and the dream it could represent continues to change.  These are the last days in which we recite in Ledavid Mizmor

כִּי יִצְפְּ֒נֵֽנִי בְּסֻכֹּה בְּיוֹם רָעָה

For He will hide me in His Tabernacle

This is the week that we add in benching, grace after meals

הָרַחֲמָן הוּא יָקִים לָֽנוּ אֶת־סֻכַּת דָּוִד הַנּוֹפָֽלֶת:

May the Merciful One raise up for us the fallen Tabernacle of David.