The sukkah is God’s home. All season we have been longing for one thing – ahat sha’alti – and that one thing is shivti beveit Hashem (Ps 27:4), to dwell in God’s house. On Sukkot we fulfill this desire by actively dwelling in this house of God.
But it’s not easy. It turns out that God’s house is not always the fortress we hoped for at the beginning of our journey (and at the beginning of Psalm 27, ma’oz hayay). God’s house is not made of thick walls and a sturdy roof that can protect us from the elements. It’s not stable and permanent, a place we can arrive and stay forever. It has holes in the roof – and often the walls – that let in the rain and the cold and the bugs. It topples over sometimes. God’s house, it turns out, is a place of vulnerability and uncertainty, of instability and transience.
We usually avoid such places. We close up the cracks tightly, like the thick armor of our houses, so that we are shielded from the reality of our own inescapable vulnerability, so that we can pretend at being in control of an uncertain future.
But on Sukkot we open up the cracks in our roofs and in ourselves; letting in not just the wind and the rain but also the light, the sparkling light of the stars above, and also the buried light inside us which can only be glimpsed, like the light above, by exposing our cracks, by admitting to our flaws and imperfections and core vulnerabilities.
It turns out that emotionally, the way that we enter God’s house is to allow ourselves to sit in the sukkah, to sit in our vulnerability and uncertainty, to move out of our barricades and defenses, at least momentarily, and to experience the rawness and intensity and truth of who we are without a shield. We are indeed easily hurt, easily wounded, both physically and emotionally. Somehow, opening up the cracks to actually feeling that vulnerability leads to connection and to intimacy, to trust and to love. We begin to see that it is okay to be ourselves, to rest in the mess of it and to trust. Perhaps what we yearn for most – ahat sha’alti – is to dwell in a house where we can be exactly who we are in all our vulnerability and genuineness, and still belong. This is how it works with other humans and this is how it works with God and with our own parts. Sharing vulnerability creates intimacy and opens pathways inside us to deep connection.
We normally hold tight against this opening. We control and effort and manipulate the world and our own emotional life to avoid the shaky feeling of being too exposed. But our fear of this feeling stops us from really experiencing and knowing God, by which I mean all of life, ourselves, each other and the Source of it all; the way to God’s house is paved with vulnerability.
When we are not defended against being vulnerable, when we actually sit in it, sit in the sukkah, sit in the sense of not knowing what will happen next and sit in the sense of how easily we could get hurt, a process is allowed to unfold that is normally stopped, a process of growing our own tenderness, like the gentle petals of a delicate flower. We blossom with the same fragility and exquisiteness and joy. As we begin to open and manifest more fully, exposing ourselves to the light and becoming part of the creative ventures of the universe, we sing a song of joy and thanksgiving. This holiday of vulnerability, after all, is also zman simchateinu, “our season of joy.” Vulnerability leads to joy as we discover that we are free and that, just as we are, without all that armor, we belong here, in God’s home.
Yes, the process may be beautiful and joyous, but how does one actually get there? How does one learn to allow the vulnerability, to be able to sit in it? What is required is Courage and Hope. The final line of Psalm 27 is the one we are meant to take with us on our journey out of this season through the year ahead, a journey which is, like the journey of the Israelites in their desert sukkahs, not stagnant, but ever evolving. This final line reminds us of what we gird ourselves with as we enter the sukkah, enter this unfolding path of vulnerability: kaveh el Hashem, hazak ve’ya’ametz libekha ve’kaveh el Hashem. “Hope in the Lord; be strong and of good courage! O hope in the Lord!” (Ps 27: 14).
As we enter the sukkah, enter into our own vulnerability, Hope stands on either side of us (as in the verse), like twin guardian angels that accompany us or perhaps like the sukkah walls surrounding us. Hope accompanies us, believing in our capacity to move forward despite our fears, assuring us of God’s constant support and faith in us, and reminding us of the jewels that lie ahead, the depth of connection and intimacy that only vulnerability offers. And so we enter, Hope on either side, and imutz lev, Courage, in our center, in our hearts (in both English and Hebrew the word “heart” is contained in the word for courage), strengthened by our time with God during this season of intense encounter and moving into the unknown desert of life with a courageous letting go of control and barriers, opening up through our cracks to glimpse the twinkling stars above and below and inside and knowing they are all one, that we are connected to it all and belong, as we are, in God’s home.
Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev at Pexels
