A matter of timing

Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross

What if they gave a party, and nobody came? That’s the question rabbis ask this time of year. Our kinfolk of the Household of Israel converge on our synagogues to hear the shofar blown on Rosh haShanah, and 10 days later, to hear its final plaintive blast to mark the conclusion of the Yom Kippur fast. But, after the sound and the drama, five days later, when Sukkot comes, it’s pretty much crickets chirping, which is too bad.

For our long-ago forebearers in the land of Israel, the jubilant Autumn harvest, Feast of Booths, was part Oktoberfest, part Mardi Gras—an occasion so joyous that, in the Bible, it is never called by name but simply referred to as החג heChag, “The Feast,” with a capital “F.” It was the occasion for Jews from all over Israel to gather for parties, feasting and catching up with friends. The Talmud describes this pilgrimage festival as a time when acrobats and musicians roamed the streets, turning all of Jerusalem into a carnival, and the torchlight made night as bright as day.

Even if we, as what Mel Brooks would call “dazzling urbanites,” may not be able to relate to a harvest festival, Sukkot is still an occasion that reconnects us with the Earth, its bounties, and above all, its fragility. In modernity, the Jewish community has made Sukkot into a contemporary festival of environmental awareness. Spending time away from conditioned air; basking in the quietude of the outdoors; smelling the fragrance of grass, trees, the fresh foliage forming the roof the sukkah and the fresh produce with which it is decorated; and watching the movement of the stars and the full harvest moon twinkling through the branches overhead—these all reconnect us to the peaceful orderliness of Creation, and to a renewed awe for the One who formed it.

They also speak to us of our own frailty. During the eight days of the festival, we watch the green thatching of the sukkah roof turn sere and yellow, as the fruits and vegetables hanging overhead shrivel and fade. At this poignant turning point of the year, when the days grow pointedly shorter and summer has faded into winter, it is a metaphor for our own transience— a fitting theme, hard on the heels of the introspective Ten Days of Repentance. It is no accident that the m’gillah (festival scroll) assigned to Sukkot is Ecclesiastes, the thoughtful and very grown-up book of the Bible that confronts the ultimate question, “What’s it all about, anyway?”

Look how far we have come in just a couple of paragraphs together: from “party hearty” to “nothing lasts forever.” What unifies those diametrical opposites is a fragile, but beautiful, little harvest booth that sways gently with every passing breeze, beckoning us to enter. The sukkah whispers to us that life is fleeting, but sweet. “Come into me and rejoice,” it murmurs. “Take delight in the world and its pleasures, which are all the richer when they are shared.”

Make the most of your sukkah at this sacred season. And be sure, as you sit basking in the peace and the fragrance and the silvery moonlight, to rejoice as well in the music of the crickets chirping.

Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross serves at Jewish Congregation of Marco Island.