Sukkot Shabbat: Resilience in the Time of Pandemic
This item originates from American Jewish Life.
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Sukkot Shabbat: Resilience in the Time of Pandemic
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Welcome to Sukkot. This is a holiday that celebrates and lives into the
many tensions in our lives. The two traditional roots of Sukkot — the
temporary homes the Israelites created during their time of wandering
in the Wilderness of Sinai, and the shelters erected in ancient Israel
during the fall harvest season — can be said to represent the space
between these tensions: the bounty of the summer harvest coupled with
the impermanence of the roofs over our heads, radical hospitality
coupled with the anxiety of the impending rain that will set the stage
for next year’s growing season.
During this year of tremendous challenge, as we prepare to bring in
Shabbat — the proverbial “Temple in Time” — within the holiday of
Sukkot, we honor all of the ways in which we have had to create
impermanent shelters that have enabled us to weather the wilderness
of the pandemic. We’ve sheltered in place, drawn circles of support
during social isolation, cared for our friends and family members,
worked in the frontlines of essential work and care, used the spaces in
our homes for far more functions than they ever used to need to fill, and
likewise used virtual tools for connection to create digital spaces to
stand in for the physical spaces we’d otherwise occupy together.
So this year as we celebrate Shabbat during Sukkot, let us celebrate
ourselves and each other — whether you have a physical Sukkah in your
yard, patio, or balcony, or your Sukkah exists only in the metaphysical
realm of your imagination, we celebrate the creation of sacred space
and time and the opportunity to dwell within its midst.
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