Sukkot

Divre Harav – October, 2025

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Hosha na, l’ma’an’kha Eloheinu, l’ma’an’kha Boreinu, l’ma’an’kha Goaleinu, l’ma’an’kha Dorsheinu, hosha na, “Save us, for your sake, our God. Save us, for your sake, our Creator, our Redeemer, the One who understands us, save us.” 

One of the defining features of the Sukkot service are the poems known as Hoshanot. They are alphabetical in arrangement, structured around the phrase, hosha na, please help us. They are very old poems, dating back to Temple times or shortly thereafter. Originally, they were chanted by a procession of Priests carrying palm branches and willows. They do not explicitly state what kind of salvation they are seeking. It is possible that they were general prayers for communal protection and sustenance, drawing out the theme of judgement from the High Holiday liturgy. Given that Sukkot is the time of year when the rainy season should begin, it is likely that the major concern is draught. Our custom is to take out a Torah and hold it at the Torah reading table while those who have a lulav and etrog process around the Torah and the chapel behind the leader, chanting the hoshanot.

There is a different poem for each day of Sukkot, including Shabbat when we open the ark and chant the hoshanot prayers without taking out a Torah and without processing with Lulav and Etrog. One day’s hoshana focuses on 22 attributes of God (one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet), another focuses on 22 descriptions of the Temple, another contains 22 descriptions of the Jewish people, yet another focuses on 22 descriptions of God accepting repentance and granting salvation.

Much of Jewish life falls into a very rational, head-centered, thoughtful, pattern of behavior. We study Torah, we engage in mitzvot that have an obvious connection to a notion of tikkun olam, supporting and repairing our community. But there is a deeper and richer element of Jewish life that comes from the heart, that doesn’t intuitively “make sense.” It’s the world of prayer and the world of ritual mitzvot. Strapping boxes of parchment onto our bodies with leather straps or wearing fringed tassels on the corners of clothing or waving bundles of plant matter or praying fervently for God to forgive us and extend our lives defy simple rational explanations. They appeal to the part of our souls that bypasses the head and instead dance to the rhythms of poetry.

The lives we live don’t always make sense. Sometimes we need metaphor and allusion and allegory to describe the indescribable. To understand joy intellectually is insufficient. We need to feel it in our bodies with dancing and singing. Sukkot is a holiday designed to push our bodies out of the safe interior of our solid homes into the flimsily build Sukkah and to make us act out our prayers by waving and marching with palms, willows, myrtle, and the etrog. Does it make you look foolish? Yes, absolutely! But don’t worry, you’re among friends. And what’s life without a bit of goofiness now and then. Hag sameah!

Hebrew word(s) of the Month:

  • • Lulav – palm
  • • Hadas – myrtle
  • • Arava – willow
  • • Etrog – citron, an ancient citrus fruit

Divre Harav – October, 2022

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What is a home? Is it the four walls that we live in? Is it the furnishings, the chairs we sit on, the dishes we serve on, the people we live with?

In the rides I’ve taken with the Grand Rapids Police Department as a COP (Clergy on Patrol), I’ve learned that when officers interview people from poor areas of the city, the question “where do you live?” does not always elicit a useful response. Often, people who encounter police officers don’t have a home, they don’t “live” anywhere. So in order to get an address, the officers instead ask, “Where do you stay?” The four walls are always changing, the furnishings and the bed or couch rotate, and the people who provide the hospitality are not always the same. So it doesn’t feel like a home in which they live, but rather a place they stay until they need to find another place to stay.

The holiday of Sukkot cultivates that kind of rootlessness. It’s a temporary place that provides uncertain shelter. On a glorious sunny day or a crisp cloudless night, it’s a wonderful place to sit down for a meal. In the bitter cold of a windy, snowy day, or when cold rain drops through the porous covering, it’s not quite so comfortable. But once a year, for seven days, it’s a mitzvah to uproot oneself from one’s home and stay, for meals at least, in the sukkah.

It’s a gratitude practice. It’s a reminder not to take one’s home or one’s comfort or security for granted. It’s a reminder of the fragility of our lives and how much we depend on God and other people for support. Don’t let Sukkot pass you by without making time to visit the synagogue Sukkah (or build one of your own). We’ll have Kiddush in the Sukkah on the Monday and Tuesday Yom Tov days of Sukkot and on Shabbat. During Sukkot, I’ll be eating my lunch out in the Sukkah, either at home or at the synagogue. I’d welcome company. And see elsewhere in the Voice for details about the joint Sukkot dinner with Temple Emanuel, the “Chili” Sukkot, on Wednesday evening, October 12.

I wish you a joyous Festival of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simhat Torah, and I hope to see you returning to the synagogue to celebrate with us.

Hebrew Words of the Month:

  • • s’khakh – the covering of a Sukkah, comprised solely of materials grown from the land.

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – October, 2011

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I don’t need to expend a huge amount of effort to convince most of you that the synagogue experience of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is not “fun.” Yet, you also understand that it is an important experience – otherwise, you would not come. As a narrow snapshot of Jewish life, the High Holiday experience is psychologically valuable, when done right. However, it is incomplete. Life is not just about the serious moments … it is also about the playful moments. A view of Jewish life that includes only Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is distorted towards the serious and heavy. I invite and encourage you to capture the other side of the emotional scale, the side of Sukkot and Simhat Torah. The singing, dancing, and eating of Simhat Torah are the antidote for the chanting and sitting (or standing and prostrating) of the earlier holidays.

Jews are an intellectual bunch. We tend to be excessively proud of educational accomplishments and the number of Jewish Nobel prize winners. Judaism values study. However, Judaism also values action. Judaism done right is more than an intellectual activity – it is a celebration of life. Simhat Torah provides balance. It is about Torah, but it is not intellectual. It is experiential. It is about using our bodies and our breath as in the Shabbat poem Nishmat kol chai, “The breath of all that lives praises you, Adonai our God” (page 334, Siddur Sim Shalom). From our limbs to our tongues, from our knees to our back, our songs, our lips, our eyes and heart – all join together to “laud, praise, extol, exalt, and sing [God’s] holiness and sovereignty.”

Sukkot breaks us out of our normal pattern of service and worship of God through primarily intellectual channels, to a more physical expression of our commitment to a Jewish life. We cannot fulfill the obligation to eat in the Sukkah by conceptualizing the role of the Sukkah in Jewish tradition, or discussing the historical context of its development. We can only do the mitzvah by putting our body into it, say a berakha, and eating something.

The physical labor I bring to building and decorating a Sukkah each year is as important to me as the money I give to Tzedakah or the time I spend in shul praying or studying. It is very easy in this world of offices, parking lots, highways, and cars, to forget the glory and power of the world around us. Our buildings are solid, our cars have powerful engines, and it is very easy to forget just how fragile we and our lives really are. All it takes is an earthquake a flood, a tsunami, a famine, or a hurricane to remind us of the power of nature. As I sit in a fragile Sukkah, open to the elements, I am very conscious of the physicality of my being. When I say shehehe’yanu on that first night, I am better able to appreciate the miracle of my existence because of the physical effort I put into constructing the Sukkah.

I wish you all a meaningful and joyous Yom Tov.

Sukkot and the Artprize Competition

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Divre Harav – November, 2010 – Sukkot and the Artprize Competition

Part of the mission of Congregation Ahavas Israel is to be a resource for people who want to explore a Jewish path to God.   As a congregation, we have presented various educational outreach programs to teach members of the Christian community about Jewish holidays and rituals.   Our Passover Seder Experience has been a very successful outreach program, teaching church communities about the elements of an authentic Seder.  My sense is that most Christians have heard of Hanukkah and Yom Kippur, although they may not really know the significance of the holidays.  However, to most people outside of the Jewish community, Sukkot is completely unknown.  They don’t realize that holiday that their Bible calls the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths is still celebrated by the Jewish community in much the same way as it was thousands of years ago.

This past September, to raise Sukkot awareness, a competition called Sukkah City took place in New York.  Rules were published outlining how to build a Sukkah according to halakha.  Entries were submitted.  Twelve finalists were chosen by a panel of jurors.  The finalists were invited to build and display the sukkot in Union Square Park.  One winner was chosen by popular vote.  Does this remind you of a little competition we held here in Grand Rapids, called Artprize?  The organizers and funders of Sukkah city want to expand the competition to cities around the world next year.

During Sukkot, I, like many of you, enjoyed the Artprize competition.  I enjoyed walking around looking at the variety of pieces of art. At some point it occurred to me that Artprize would be a great opportunity to teach about Sukkot.

I am imagining a Sukkah decorated outside and inside with prose and poetry and pictures about the meaning of the Sukkah, the message of the Sukkah and by extension the message of Judaism.  It would be an exploration of homelessness and insecurity versus permanence and rootedness.  It would explore the roots of the American Thanksgiving, and the growing interest in food production and community supported agriculture.

I am not an artist, an engineer, or a carpenter.  This is not a project that I have the skills to coordinate.  I’m just tossing out the idea to see if anyone is up for designing a Sukkah and entering it into the Artprize competition next year.  I’m envisioning a small committee, sponsored by the synagogue, of a few people to design and build the structure, and a few people to create the messages on the walls.  If this is an idea that appeals to you, please contact me.  I will help you create an ad hoc committee to get started in preparation for next year’s Artprize.