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SUCCOT 5785
Thank You
Rabbi Andrew Shaw Chief Executive, Mizrachi UK
I don’t think I have ever had a more stressful week in my professional career.
Communicating with over 500 shuls across the globe and working with UPS and Fedex to make sure all shuls get their Me’ilim by Simchat Torah for the culmination of the Simchat Torah Project!
It has been a mammoth undertaking involving a marketing team in Florida, a Me’il production company in Petach Tikva, a shipping company in Brooklyn, Mizrachi branches all across the world and of course the HQ of the project – the Mizrachi UK team, here in London.
Yet, understandably, people in shuls all around the world have been very stressed
Their shuls have been expecting the Me’ilim for a while.
They have paid for them.
And they were waiting
So, we have been receiving hundreds of emails, WhatsApps and calls. All from concerned and worried shuls who want to know the progress of the delivery of their
What has been so uplifting for me, is that communications have been with a sense of acknowledgement of the scale of the project, an understanding of the complicated nature of delivery due to the ongoing situation in Israel and most importantly a tremendous sense of gratitude to us, for what we are doing.
There has been no anger, no frustration, no harsh words – despite the frustration and annoyance – all there has been is gratitude.
So, thank you world – and what a perfect message as we enter Succot and as we sit in our imsy Succot, grateful to Hashem for what we have. To be a Jew is to be grateful, and over the last year, I have never felt more thankful and grateful that I am part of Am Yisrael.
However, there is a deeper message about Succot that goes to the heart of our current situation.
As a child, the 1st night of Succot was one of my favourite nights of the year, I remember one year asking a question along the following lines.
‘If Succot is meant to be Zman Simchatenu -a time of happiness and joy, why do we sit outside in the cold in a imsy structure?’
My favourite answer to this question is from Rabbi Sacks, someone whose wisdom is needed more than ever in the upside-down that world we live in.
He wrote these words 11 years ago:
What is truly remarkable is that it is called, by tradition, zeman simchatenu, “Our time of joy.”
That to me is the wonder at the heart of the Jewish experience: that Jews throughout the ages were able to experience risk and uncertainty at every level of their existence and yet – while they sat betzila de-mehemnuta, “under the shadow of faith” (this is the Zohar’s description of the sukkah: Zohar, Emor,103a) – they were able to rejoice That is spiritual courage of a high order. I have often argued that faith is not certainty: faith is the courage to live with uncertainty. That is what Sukkot represents if what we celebrate is sukkot mammash, not the clouds of glory but the vulnerability of actual huts, open to the wind, the rain and the cold.
I nd that faith today in the people and the State of Israel. It is astonishing to me how Israelis have been able to live with an almost constant threat of war and terror since the State was born, and not give way to fear I sense even in the most secular Israelis a profound faith, not perhaps “religious” in the conventional sense, but faith nonetheless: in life, and the future, and
hope Israelis seem to me perfectly to exemplify what tradition says was God’s reply to Moses when he doubted the people’s capacity to believe: “They are believers, the children of believers” (Shabbat 97a).Today’s Israel is a living embodiment of what it is to exist in a state of insecurity and still rejoice.
So tonight, when we hopefully sit in our Sukkot, we will thank God for what we have, we will marvel at our nation, and realise that we really are part of a remarkable nation.
And then in six days time, on Tuesday night 22nd October, we will come to Hoshana Rabba, the last day of Succot, as we get ready to leave our Succot to move into Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah
That will be harder than ever before, normally a build up of joy and celebration will this year be replaced with fear and trepidation.
That is why we are holding, along with the United Synagogue and the RCUS a very special evening AM ECHAD B’LEV ECHAD – One nation with one heart, to bring the community together, with their Me’ilim, for an evening of prayer, song and unity
It is vital that you book, www.mizrachi.org.uk/amechad we are lling up fast.
For security reasons you will be emailed the location nearer the time.
Please join us for an evening which will be dif cult, but I think also inspiring and will also remind us of who we are as a nation and our determination to not just remember but to continue to build.
And continue to be grateful.
Chag Sameach
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