Finding a Way Home (tonights drashito) I want to tell you a story tonight, a story about the most beautiful sukkah I have ever seen. A few years back, when I was living in New York City, the organization Reboot – an invitation only organization for young Jews high up in the media, arts and politics – hosted a sukkah competition in New York City. It was a competition to see who could build the most beautiful, innovative, meaningful sukkot in the world. Held in Union Square, Jewish artists, architects and designers from all over the world were given a year to design and construct sukkot that adhered to the proper halachic, or legal, standards. The sukkot would then be placed in the center of Union Square for a number of weeks, where ultimately, they would be voted on by a panel of judges. The competition sukkot were, by and large, beautiful. They were works of art. They were constructed from bamboo, or entirely biodegradable, or made of roughhewn pine or dyed fabrics. They had a variety of schach on top (that is, the greenery that forms the ceiling that one sees the stars through at night when they lie down in a sukkah) and they were breezy and shaded, large and strangely quiet inside, even in the middle of downtown Manhattan. But the most striking of them was none of these things, and inside, offered precious little peace. See, one of the artists in the competition had taken it upon himself to learn not just about the laws of building sukkot, but about the history of the holiday. And in the midst of his learning, one of the things he’d come across was that sukkot were only ever intended – and allowed - to serve as temporary dwellings for a people who, though they may have lived in seemingly permanent dwellings, did not, for much of their history of diaspora and exile, feel as if they had a permanent and safe home. And so the artist had traveled the country and collected, in every city he visited, over a number of months, cardboard signs from the beggars and runaways and homeless of each city, from the people he’d met on the streets. And he’d constructed a sukkah entirely from these cardboard placards. And so the inner and outer walls of his sukkah, were covered in words; words that read: “Hungry, please help.” Or “living on the streets with my three children, anything helps.” Or, “Please, just enough money for a place to stay.” It was impossible to stand in that sukkah and not feel a part of the transience and fragility of Jewish history. It was impossible to stand in that sukkah and not feel a small piece of the terror of exile, of wandering towards homecoming. It was impossible to stand in that sukkah and not understand, if only for a moment, how terrifying and destabilizing it must be to be homeless in America, in New York City, in Los Angeles, or in San Diego. This Sukkah did not win the competition, but I believed then, as I do now, that it should have. See, over the past few centuries, there has developed a certain custom among Hasidim of inviting the most destitute members their communities into their sukkot for a good meal and a place to sleep. It is a throwback, in some ways, to the custom of inviting Elijah to our seder tables, and it evokes the language of Passover, of wandering home: “Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are needy come and celebrate.” This Sukkot, may we, as we sit and eat in our own sukkot, as we sleep and rejoice in them, remember those for whom temporary dwellings are not cause to celebrate, those for whom a home open to the sky lasts more than the length of a holiday, and as we do may we endeavor to, this Sukkot and always, do what we can to help them find a way home. Kein Yehi Ratzon. May this be God’s will and may it be ours as well.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 22:48:16 +0000
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