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!

I wanted to write a blog about Jewish meditation and dating. As I got deeper into it, I realized that what I really wanted to write about was loneliness and fear – the two elements of dating that suck any semblance of fun out of the experience and produce an enormous amount of suffering and despair. And today happens to be Tisha B’av – the anniversary of the destruction of the great Temple. This is a day rife with lessons about the Jewish people’s spiritual home literally crumbling around them, leaving them feeling desperately alone.

Rabbi Simon Jacobson, a well-known Jewish author and educator, notes that in the Book of Lamentations, traditionally read on the evening of Tisha B’Av, we read the words, “Aichah Yoshva Bodad” which means “How lonely it is to be sitting alone.” He says the Jewish people at this historical moment experience a cosmic loneliness, as the holy structure that has held them together falls apart.

That sentence is loaded with a feeling I deeply recognize. Sitting alone. Naked. Lost.  No walls to hide or protect us. With all our faults exposed, who would love us? Who are we to be loved?

When one is single and doesn’t want to be. It can be bone-crushingly lonely. It can feel like you are being punished for something, and you don’t know what for.

Loneliness, alienation, and fear go together for me. I feel lonely when I feel alienated from who I really am. I feel like there is a chasm within me, and I don’t know how to bridge it.  I can’t see what there is to love about me, because I don’t feel very loving towards myself. I then feel fear because I don’t see an end in sight, and I, like the author of lamentations, feel cosmically alone and terrified. When the walls come down, that is what is left standing for me. That is what loneliness really is.

So what should we do in that place, in the ashes of the destroyed temple of our lives, amid the rubble of insecurity and alienation and fear? Rabbi Alan Lew writes, “our suffering, the unresolved element of our lives, is also from God. It is the instrument by which we are carried back to God, not something to be defended against, but rather to be embraced.”

My wish for this Tisha B’Av is to be able to see loneliness as a gift – a phone call from that alienated, broken, mistreated parts of ourselves, desperate to be seen and loved in the cold harsh light of day.