Everyday Succah
Why we need a Succah every day of the year...
If we allow ourselves to melt into the rhythm of the Jewish Calendar, we discover there is a very specific flow of events, which continually propels us into deeper places of self awareness.
On Rosh Hashanah we acknowledge our creation, on Yom Kippur we crack open. We stand on a spiritual high, raw and exposed. but then what? What do we do when we are striped back and open, brimming with new potential?
We are given a plan. Build a succah. We are asked to eat and sleep outdoors; Soul vulnerability evolves to physical vulnerability.
We are not told to build a permanent wall, an enforced stronghold. We are asked to put up a temporary shelter - one that with its sparse ceiling and open side, lets in starlight, love, wind, rain and every energy in between.
Succot is like summer camp or a spiritual retreat. It’s a half-way house Hashem has us make for ourselves on our way back down from the highs of Yom Kippur; it’s a practice run before we are released into the wild of the everyday.
While Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur demarcate a period of stillness and individual reckoning, building a Succah requires communal effort and the holiday is enjoyed in communal space. We usher in our tribe and together we endeavour - we’re being taught that in the every-day world our holiness is revealed through our actions and the way we relate to one another.
In our new, peeled-back states we are literally held by these fragile shelters and the circles within them. Healing is found in gathering; We are gifted a space to be present in our vulnerability, one that can be an incubator for our revived selves - how can we support and encourage one another? How can we honor the inspiration we found just days ago?
We sit in the succah reminded of Hashem’s holy hovering presence, but then the challenge emerges -
Can we hold on to this feeling when the Succah is removed, when we sit exposed to the elements without a symbolic covering to remind us of Him?
When the dwelling is not literally open, can we welcome in friends and strangers with the same open heartedness and certainty that the space will grow to fit the love within?
When there is no designated Succah to bulid, can we lay foundations and manifest together with spiritual purpose?
Whether you can get to a Succah before the end of this week, or whether you simply imagine a Succah in your mind, tap into this holy, eight-day intensive.
Take a minute to sit in reflection. In which circles and situations are you truly able to be vulnerable? Where can you be exposed and yet feel held in your rawness? Where do you reveal your essence with ease and joy? Do you feel faith that you are constantly protected? Can you sense the freedom that comes when you are not defined by your home and possessions?
The holiday culminates in euphoria with Simchat Torah, and only then do we roll back into the regularity of the year. But we return, hopefully, with revived purpose, brave and open, and with new-found understanding of ourselves.
Sukkot comes to teach us that in our vulnerability we can find beauty, community, support and joy. It provides us with a safe space which reminds us of our primal need for all these things and above all, it reminds us how important it is to invest in building the “Succahs” of our everyday lives.
Chag Sameach!
xx
Micaela