SHORT ESSAY: Beyond Judgment, There Is Joy (Sukkot)

Maybe what we leave behind in our homes is as important as the sukkah we build.    

The sukkah is a chance for a fresh, new living space, one built out of the purity of our singular desire to dwell with God, the fulfillment of the prayer — ahat sha’alt me’et Hashem  — only one thing do I ask for, and that is to dwell in God’s house.     

As we move into this new dwelling place with God, what can we leave behind?  

We can leave behind judgment.  Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the days of judgment, are over.  When judgment subsides, there is room for joy, the simple joy of connection, of sitting together in God’s house.   As the Sufi poet Rumi puts it, “out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.  I’ll meet you there.”   The sukkah is such a field, a place beyond our habitual constructed judgments, a place of simply dwelling without evaluating; we can meet God there; we can meet each other there.

What does it mean to leave judgment behind in our permanent homes?  We normally spend a lot of mental energy in a continual sorting of experience, people, and feelings into “good” and “bad,” “pleasant” and “unpleasant,” “my type” and “not my type.”  We compare the food, the singing, the atmosphere, the weather, the way things unfold to an ideal in our head — does it measure up?  Does it meet the standard?  Do we meet the standard?   Are we, our children, our spouses, our friends acting as they “should”?   Is the feeling I am having right now a good one or one to be avoided and resisted?  

These are our normal habits of thinking, the way that we have constructed our internal homes, the bricks and mortar that hold us fast to where we are, in a sturdy, immobile, but apparently safe home; we know what is what here; there is some sense of security in the judgment, a veneer of comfort and control.

But there is also distance. To evaluate puts obstacles between us and the experience; if we are judging, we are not connecting; we are not truly present in the moment, but subtly resisting it as it is, comparing it to some preconceived notion of how we would like things to be.  When we judge the person in front of us, we are not really with them or even seeing them as they are, but comparing and wishing they were otherwise.  

On Sukkot we leave our ordinary homes of judgment and move into the divine home of presence, a mini mishkan, whose essence is Shekhinah , Divine Presence.   

True presence requires dropping judgment, sitting in what is without resistance, not comparing it to what should be, but dropping fully into this moment as it is actually manifesting, coming to rest in the world as it is,  alma divra kirutei, this already perfect world that God created as He saw fit.  

Here in this house of presence, there is a new permeability to the roof over our heads and to the hearts beating inside us, a new capacity to open to God and to each other, not to shut the lid to protect ourselves from the elements, but to open with vulnerability and presence to the possibility of real intimacy and connection, to let in the weather, whatever the weather, to have a direct experience of reality, unmediated by judgment.

So this Sukkot, as you sit in the Sukkah, stop for a moment, feel the open air and the sky above you; feel yourself here right now connected to God and to the people around you.  Rest in this moment.  Let go of worrying about how things should be — of comparisons and disappointments or even wanting — and just be present to the divine as it is manifesting right now around you.  Dwell in God’s house.  

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio at Pexels