Religion
Of towers and tabernacles
Many years ago, when downtown Johannesburg was still home to Jewish shopkeepers and office dwellers, in my capacity as director of Chabad House, I would always organise the Central City succah. The little booth stood at the foot of the Carlton Centre, at the time Africa’s biggest office and shopping complex.
Rabbi Yossy Goldman
A Succot message from Rabbi Yossy Goldman of Sydenham Shul
One year, I asked a photographer to take a shot of the succah and the Carlton Centre skyscraper together. He had to use a rather sophisticated lens to get them both into one picture. Naturally, the succah was dwarfed by the skyscraper. But I couldn’t help thinking that, in the end, that humble little succah would outlast even the mightiest of skyscrapers.
Indeed, since 9/11 and the collapse of the world’s tallest towers, that feeling is even stronger.
There are two opinions in the Talmud as to what we commemorate when we build our succah. One is that it recalls the booths our ancestors built to shelter themselves from the burning desert sun after the Exodus from Egypt. The other, is that the succah recalls not a physical shelter but the spiritual shelter provided by the Clouds of Glory, Hashem’s protective cover that shielded them from many harmful effects.
Rashi, in his commentary seems to favour the latter opinion of spiritual rather than physical shelter. This seems to be corroborated by the halacha in the Laws of Succah, that if the schach, the leafy covering is so thick that the rain cannot penetrate, then the succah is actually invalid (posul).
It would seem that the purpose of the succah is to remind us wherein lies our true security. It is in the protective cover of G-d, as symbolised by the Clouds of Glory, rather than in our own man-made shelters.
This is, in fact, the most important moral lesson we are meant to derive from this beautiful festival. “Life is but a succah”, a temporary dwelling, here today, gone tomorrow – “a fleeting dream”, as we said on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
So, where do we look for strength, hope, salvation and our ultimate security? Not in the impressive man-made skyscrapers. We have seen all too horribly and vividly on our television screens how the mightiest towers on earth collapsed like a deck of cards!
And now life in South Africa is a mirror of the meshugaas that happens elsewhere. Today, an ordinary trip on an airplane requires taking off our shoes and being scanned for weapons; and even a little scissors or a vial of liquid is suspect. And this year we have seen unprecedented security measures around all our Jewish centres. Suddenly, nowhere is safe.
Yes, at the end of the day, “Life is but a succah”. When we realise our own vulnerability and our dependence on G-d for our life, our livelihood, our safety and security, then we begin to understand that we are under His protective shield. And then, wherever we are, we can feel safe in His embrace.
Every year, in my succah at home, we sing an old Yiddish song called “Ah Sukkele ah Kleineh” – or, The Little Succah, the story of a dilapidated, barely-standing succah that is being threatened by gale force winds.
The succah becomes the symbol of the Jewish condition, frail and vulnerable but, inevitably indestructible.
No winds can destroy the Jewish succah. Our travelling tabernacle has given us shelter from the winds of change that swept through many continents over the centuries of Jewish journeys.
When we remember that it is Hashem, the Guardian of Israel, who is our ultimate shelter and source of security, we find strength and serenity no matter what is howling outside.
May we all enter the succah literally and figuratively and find the shelter and security we all seek in the warm embrace of the small but impregnable succah.