This year, as Sukkot rolls around, I’m thinking a lot about what it means to rejoice in our vulnerability.  After all, we are commanded to rejoice on Sukkot (Leviticus 23:40)—as we spend time in temporary shelters that may make us feel scared and insecure rather than joyful.

This question takes on particular significance for those of us who have experienced some kind of violation.  Physical abuse, sexual abuse, and the routine mini-violations of sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, etc., are all experiences that render our bodies and spirits unduly vulnerable to those who may not have our best interests at heart.  For those of us who are just beginning to establish and protect our boundaries after a history of violation, abandoning ourselves to the open air may be the worst possible idea. A blogger on About.com recently described why it might be halachically legitimate for someone recovering from anorexia to refrain from fasting on Yom Kippur.  Similarly, I can understand why someone recovering from boundary-related trauma might choose not to spend time in the sukkah.

However, I also think that Sukkot can be an opportunity to experience the act of opening in a safe, boundaried way.  For example, consider the commandment to rejoice.  As we recall from Tisha B’Av, it adds insult to injury when captors demand that their slaves sing (Psalm 137).  Similarly, many of us, especially women, are often pressured to suppress our negative emotions because they are “unbecoming”—i.e., they are inconvenient for those around us.  We are asked to distort our own reactions—which are often very central to who we are—in order to gratify others.

The commandment to rejoice can feel like this same type of violation—“Why should I rejoice when I am unhappy?”  Those of us who meditate, especially, are likely to chafe under the commandment to feel a certain way, because we’re used to practicing full acceptance of all our emotions—we know from experience that the harder we try to hold onto an emotion, the less likely we are to actually feel it.

In one of the very first posts on the JMC blog, Yael shared the Rumi poem, The Guest House (click here). This is much more consistent with the Sukkot I want to have: a Sukkot in which the temporary dwelling, the guest house, lets everything in and out, and reminds me to let everything in and out as well.  Perhaps this openness, this willingness to be with life as it is, in its glorious and painful fullness—perhaps this is the true experience of “rejoicing.”

I wrote more about this topic (and how it pertains to the custom of ushpizin, or inviting ancestral guests into the sukkah) in this week’s Torah Queery on the Jewish Mosaic website—you can check it out by clicking here.

The views expressed by guestbloggers do not necessarily reflect the Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn’s positions, interests, strategies or opinions. But that’s what keeps it interesting.

I’ve just come to the end of Rabbi Alan Lew’s “This is Real and Your Are Completely Unprepared.” The book takes the reader from Tisha B’Av through Sukkot on a beautiful, spiritual journey that deepens the significance of each day of this period.  According to Rabbi Lew, Sukkot ends this period on a triumphant note:

He writes:

“This journey starts at Tisha B’Av, the day we remember the destruction of the Temple. It’s a logical start on the journey to reconciliation, toward wholeness. Tisha B’Av is the day that we acknowledge our estrangement–from God, from each other, from ourselves. That’s how you being a journey of reconciliation–by acknowledging your estrangement… Here we are at Tisha B’Av, sitting on the floor mourning this broken house…

Months later, at the end of the journey, we’re sitting in another broken house, the sukkah. Only now, we’re rejoicing. We’re singing and dancing. At first we saw the fact that the house was broken was a great catastrophe. And now we see we don’t need it. We can sit outside with the stars in our hair and the wind in our face, and we’re perfectly fine. And that’s the real journey. It has two major parts–the first coming to the realization that we are completely unprepared, that we are in a state of urgent and desperate emergency. And then second realizing that it’s alright.”

I love these last two sentences so much. My family always had a Sukkah growing up, and I’ve always loved the holiday. Sleeping, eating and living outside is such a magical experience. To me the holiday doesn’t have the spirit of wild, unbridled joy that Simcha Torah or Purim have, but it has something equally precious – a feeling of freedom and connection. A fluidity between the outside and the inside. A feeling that what we have is just what we need.

I’m excited that several of the JMC events this  month are outside (JMC meditation picnic in Prospect Park October 18th, Meditation walk across the Brooklyn Bridge October 29th).  Hopefully it will allow people without their own Sukkah, like me, to take in the spirit of the Holiday – bundling ourselves up, breathing the fall air, remembering that even as our structures are ramshackle and makeshift, we are, and will be, okay.

Chag Sameach – Have a wonderful Sukkot!

Sukkot is coming.  One of the hallmarks of this holiday is the flimsy homes we move into-temporary booths that we erect in a few minutes-with insubstantial roofs that allow in the sun and rain, and walls that shake as the wind buffets them. At the end of the holiday, in just about the same time that it took us to erect them and with some regret, we disassemble our temporary shelters.

Next week, the Jewish Meditation Center will co-host a respected Tibetan Buddhist teacher who will discuss impermanence.

Impermanence is a central focus of Buddhism.  It’s one of the Four Noble Truths, the very foundations of that religion.  What’s impermanence?  Nothing remains the same.  Ultimately, everything changes, literally everything.  There’s nothing you can hang your hat on, nothing that will still be there tomorrow.

In Judaism we have impermanence too.  In the very moving prayer services on Rosh HaShanna and Yom Kippur we say: “We are like a flower that fades, grass that withers, a cloud that evaporates, a gust that blows by and like a dream that dissipates.”   Also: “People come from dust, and to the dust they return.”  Wow – we are really impermanent!

But I believe there are three things that are not impermanent.  They are Judaism’s foundations.

First, there’s God.  We call God “the Rock.”  Rocks are solid and stable, so we use them as a metaphor for God.  God says in the Torah: “I, God, have not changed.”  From before time and space came to be, to after all time and space will pass from existence – God.  In the Rosh HaShanna and Yom Kippur services we proclaim: “You are the Sovereign, God alive and everlasting.”

Want to depend on something that was there yesterday, is there now, and will be there tomorrow, never changing, infinite and beyond all conception but still imminent, reachable, available here and now, active in history, and in constant relationship with you and all of existence?  That’s God.

Then there’s Torah.  Torah is the blueprint for the universe.  Before time and space existed, there was Torah.  When time and space pass away, Torah.

Finally, there’s the people we call collectively “Israel.”  As long as there are people in the world, we have a promise from God that Israel will endure.

Now there’s something to meditate about.

keep it short and sweet (or bitter. but not too bitter.)