This Friday evening (September 29) is Erev Sukkot as well as Erev Shabbat. The seven days of Sukkot—celebrated by dwelling in the sukkah, taking the Four Kinds of special vegetation, and rejoicing—is the holiday when we expose ourselves to the elements in covered huts; commemorating Gd’s sheltering our ancestors as they traveled from Egypt to the Promised Land. The Four Kinds express our unity and our belief in Gd’s omnipresence. Coming after the solemn High Holidays, it is a time of joy and happiness. The first two days (or one day in Israel) are yom tov, when work is forbidden, candles are lit in the evening and festive meals are preceded with Kiddush and contain challah dipped in honey. The remainder of the days are quasi holidays, known as chol hamoed. We dwell in the sukkah and take the Four Kinds every day (except for Shabbat, when we do not take the Four Kinds).

Read more about Sukkot at Chabad.org

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Every holiday has a theme. Each holiday is multifaceted and can be tackled from as many angles as there are minds. Each Torah law has many explanations, each custom many reasons, and each holiday its own subjective meaning for each individual. Sukkot is no different. Different writers tackle the same issue – be it the Four Kinds, the sukkah, the joy, the unity –but each article has its uniqueness, its message, its character. No two are the same.

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But at a second – deeper – glance, all the angles can be traced back to one unifying core: Unity. At the core of this holiday is the quest for oneness. Let’s take a look. We bind four different types of vegetation, each representing a type of Jew, or a specific mode of serving Gd, and shake them together. Unity. We all sit in the sukkah, unsheltered by our fancy houses and imaginary elitism, everybody squeezing together. Unity. We dance together at the Simchat Bet Hasho’evah, my sweaty hand locked in your sweaty hand, no one more important than the other, all joining in the collective joy of “one nation under one Gd.” Unity.

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Thousands of Chabad rabbis and students go out to the streets in Sukkah Mobiles to meet fellow Jews and offer them the opportunity to shake the Four Kinds and just have a nice friendly chat. Unity. At the core of the almost seven billion human beings walking the beautiful earth is a quest for unity: unity and harmony within ourselves, unity with our fellows and environment, and unity with our Creator. This quest can be covered with dust, concealed by hate and stigma, obscured by ego, and masked by bloodshed—but the quest never dies, and never will die until we bring peace and harmony to our world. 

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For seven days a year we dedicate ourselves to bringing unity to our world. On this holiday, united we sit.

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From an article by Rabbi Levi Avtzon

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Loosen your grasp. Stop trying to micromanage your world. The One who made it is already doing that. What does He leave for you? Opportunities. Another chance and another chance to do good. And if you should fail, yet another chance.

Grab the opportunities. Let Him decide where they lead.

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Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

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The prophet Zechariah describes Moshiach as “a pauper, riding on a donkey.” Indeed, humility is the hallmark of the righteous: they recognize that their tremendous talents and achievements, and the power vested in them as leaders, are not theirs but their Creator’s. They live not to realize and fulfill themselves, but to serve the divine purpose of creation. On a deeper level, Moshiach’s donkey represents the essence of the messianic process: a process that began with the beginning of time and which constitutes the very soul of history. In the beginning, the Torah tells us, when Gd created the heavens and the earth, the spirit of G-d hovered above the emerging existence. Says the Midrash: “The spirit of Gd hovered” — this is the spirit of Moshiach.“ For Moshiach represents the divine spirit of creation — the vision of the perfected world that is Gd’s purpose in creating it and populating it with willful, thinking and achieving beings.

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Based on the teachings of The Lubavitcher Rebbe; adapted by Rabbi Yanki Tauber

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I’ve just stepped off the bus with my one-year-old baby and nine-year-old son on a sunny fall afternoon. We’re on our way to a holiday celebration at our local Chabad center. It’s Sukkot, a biblical Jewish holiday that celebrates the festival of the harvest. Few people in this sukkah, a dwelling made of wooden walls and poles and roofed with bamboo and green leaves, know I’m one of the non-observant ones. I don’t follow the laws of kosher or Shabbat. After years of trying to feel Jewish on a kibbutz in Israel, I’m hoping for another stab at religion and Gd, in an attempt to find a deeper spiritual connection.

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It’s not that I haven’t had the chance to find a connection. I attended a very posh Hebrew day school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan until fifth grade, and knew the prayers by heart, but that was it. On almost every Jewish holiday we’d take the 60- minute journey on the Long Island Railroad to my aunt and uncle’s house in Far Rockaway, Queens—away from our Greenwich Village artists’ building, which was called “Westbeth”—for some “serious Jewishness.” I looked forward to these trips out of the city, to where the skyscrapers would shrink to one or two stories; but confining walls would come down on us the minute we’d enter the front door: “Don’t make noise,” and “Don’t jump on the beds,” were my aunt’s first statements.

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At synagogue, time stood still, especially during the mourner’s prayer and Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur, as I counted down the minutes. I was expected to fast without an explanation as to why. There was no TV or talking on the phone. I was swallowed in prayer and quiet. What was the use in obeying so many rituals and rules without “tuning into” G-d? Was Gd hanging up on me? Did I not pray fervently enough?

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During my 18 years of living on a kibbutz in Israel, seeing clashes between various Jewish groups caused my connection to Gd to move even further to the opposite side of the spiritual pendulum. 

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I grab one of the few empty places in the sukkah, and immediately the same old ashamed internal voices descend on me again. At one point in his talk, this young fervent rabbi looks directly at me, and I’m wondering if he knows about my background and how I was brought up.

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All my life, I was made to feel different, and if I didn’t play by the rules then I wasn’t a “good,” serious Jew. Is that how I want my son and daughter to feel? Do I have what it takes to connect?

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Million dollar words then pour out of this fervent rabbi’s mouth. “Praying to Gd is not something we have to do. We pray to Gd as a way to tune in to Gd.” Tune in to Gd. I like that. Like a radio signal or wave. My heart opens. I allow myself to trust again. I had never heard a rabbi speak with this much compassion, faith and understanding, and in a way that connects me to the human experience of “why?” “Why is a connection to Gd important? What’s in it for me?”

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The young rabbi speaks again, this time about what it was like to attend services in the presence of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, and how he had encountered Gdliness by performing good deeds, or mitzvahs. The young man’s father was the secretary of the Rebbe for many years.

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The impromptu talk has just ended, and with that, the rabbi makes a l’chaim: “May we always have the faith and trust to find the good path in life so we can be seen by Gd.” In unison we say “Amen,” and my “Amen” rings out with conviction. As I lift my one-year-old in her long sweater dress, I come face to face with yet another rabbi. 

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“Good Shabbos,” he says with a smile. “Shabbat shalom,” I say, smiling back. I may have filled my belly, but something tells me I’ve initiated a spiritual journey of compassion. And this time it won’t be just for the food.

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Dorit Sasson

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