Tonight we will step out of sturdy rooms into a shelter that welcomes the wind and the stars. Sukkot tells us to live, for one tender week, with a roof that lets the rain in and walls that can sway.
The Talmud asks a deceptively simple question, what does the Torah mean by “sukkot”? On Sukkah 11b we find two voices. Rabbi Eliezer teaches that the sukkot were the Ananei HaKavod, the clouds of glory that wrapped our ancestors in Divine care in the wilderness. Rabbi Akiva answers that they were sukkot mamash, real huts of wood and brush, built with human hands.
These two teachings give us a map for Sukkot. Rabbi Eliezer calls us to trust, to cultivate a spiritual life thick with awareness that we are held. Rabbi Akiva calls us to responsibility, to build structures that keep people safe, fed, warm, and seen. Spiritual well-being and physical security are not rivals. They belong together in this fragile little house.
If we listen to Rabbi Eliezer alone, we might drift into a faith so airy that it forgets bodies. We could speak beautifully about God’s presence and ignore the person shivering in the night. If we listen only to Rabbi Akiva, we might build perfect huts and lose the reason we built them. We could win every battle for survival and forget what survival is for.
Sukkot teaches the choreography between the two. The roof must be porous enough to see the heavens, yet thick enough to cast shade. We do not sleep entirely exposed, and we do not close ourselves off completely. The mitzvah itself encodes the balance.
So what is this week asking of us, here and now? First, to say clearly that the mere physical survival of the Jewish people is not enough. Our tradition calls us to sanctify life with justice, compassion, humility, and joy. A people that survives without practising its values has missed its own destination. The clouds of glory are not nostalgia. They are a demand that our communities become canopies of care, places where the lonely are welcomed, the anxious are comforted, and the powerful are reminded that strength is for service.
Second, to say with equal clarity that values cannot be lived when existence is under threat. Rabbi Akiva’s huts are not optional. We need safe homes and neighbourhoods, initiatives that protect the vulnerable, and the courage to defend human dignity. We also need the communal infrastructure that allows Jewish life to thrive, practical systems of security and safeguarding, networks of hesed and mental-health support. There is no Judaism without Jewish life, and there is no Jewish life worthy of the name without Judaism.
The pactice of shaking the four species helps us practise the same truth. We bring together species that grow in different terrains and hold different textures. None is complete on its own. Together they become a blessing. Bring heart and spine, courage and tenderness, skill and prayer. Bring Rabbi Akiva’s practicality and Rabbi Eliezer’s faith. Shake them in all directions, because holiness is not confined to a single point on the compass.
When we welcome ushpizin, guests of spirit and flesh, we repeat the lesson again. Avraham enters with hospitality. Miriam enters with song. Ruth enters with loyalty. Invite them all. Then invite the neighbour you barely know, the person you have not called, the person whose story is unlike yours. Real huts become clouds of glory when their doors are open.
This week, as we sit under this woven sky, let us choose a path that holds both truths. We will work for physical safety, for all who dwell with us. We will also hold fast to a Judaism that heals, elevates, and critiques, a Judaism that remembers the stranger and refuses to trade conscience for comfort. We will build huts, and we will weave clouds.
May our sukkah steady our hands and widen our hearts. May God spread over us the sukkat shalom, the shelter of peace. And may the joy of this festival give us strength to protect life, and the wisdom to fill that life with meaning.
Chag sameach.
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