Sukkot 2026 / 5787 סֻכּוֹת

There are three major harvest festivals and they're also major agrarian holidays.  These are Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot.  

Obviously, Pesach is a holiday that celebrates our liberation from slavery in Egypt and Shavuot is about the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.  

• What is Sukkot about?
• Isn’t there something different about Sukkot?
• Sukkot doesn’t seem to be about an EVENT.  
• Sukkot doesn’t seem to be about an ACTIVITY as in Shavuot and Pesach.

Here’s the passage that creates the mitzvah of building a sukkah:

“Live in sukkot for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in sukkot so that your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in sukkot when I brought them out of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”

Rabbi Eliezer held that the sukkah represents the clouds of glory that surrounded the Israelites during the wilderness years, protecting them from heat during the day, cold during the night, and bathing them with the radiance of the Divine presence.  In contrast, Rabbi Akiva takes a much more literal view:  he maintains that the sukkah has no symbolism whatsoever. It’s JUST a hut, and that’s that.

• How can Akiva even think that?
• How can Akiva be right?
• If he IS right, then what is the miracle?  

We can of course see the miracles associated with our flight from Egypt. And we certainly see the miracle that led to our receiving of the Torah.  But what’s so miraculous about living in a hut? Lots of nomadic people probably did it in ancient times; and still today, lots of nomadic people continue to live in temporary housing like huts. 

But let’s think about this a little more. If Rabbi Eliezer is right, then what sacrifice did the Jewish people make? If Eliezer is right, then the clouds of glory kept the Israelites safe all the time. They were never too cold at night, never too hot during the day, and they could feel God’s divine presence at all times.

Granted, that’s miraculous.  

But it would mean that the Jews didn’t need faith.  It would mean that they lived for forty years in the desert with no physical challenges, with no need for faith.  If, on the other hand, Rabbi Akiva is right, then it means that the Jews risked EVERYTHING in order to reach the Promised Land. It means that the Jews trusted that God would find them a permanent home, after years of dwelling in these temporary, fragile structures.

The Tanakh tells us that Sukkot is the ONLY holiday that will one day be celebrated by the entire world.  Imagine - not Simchas Torah, not Pesach, not Yom Kippur.  Sukkot.  How could that be?

Perhaps we will always need the physical reminder of our humble origins.  Perhaps we will always need to remember that we need to have faith, even when we are feeling insecure and vulnerable. Isn’t that the nature of faith, that we can believe at those times when it might be hardest to believe?

Sukkot is a holiday that’s all about ephemerality. Everything that we see as permanent in our world–everything that we pour all of our efforts into, everything that stresses us out on a daily basis - is fleeting.

Sukkot is a tangible reminder of the intangible. For a week, we construct a deliberately flimsy house in our backyards or terraces in order to remind ourselves of our relationship to God. Instead of a roof, we have thin branches between which we can see the stars. For a week, we make a statement: we trust in God rather than more sturdy walls and rooftops to protect us, just as God did for the Israelites in the desert on their way to Israel all those years ago.  Just as God has done for Jews throughout the ages. Just as God does for the state of Israel today.

By tradition, Sukkot is called, zeman simchatenu, “our time of joy.” What a miracle that is!  Jews, throughout the ages, were able to experience risk and uncertainty at every level of their existence and yet – while they sat betzail emunatah, “under the shadow of faith” - they were able to rejoice. That is spiritual courage of a high order.  Rabbi Jonathon Sacks has argued that faith is not certainty: faith is the courage to live with uncertainty.

That is what Sukkot represents if what we celebrate is sukkot mammash, not the clouds of glory, but the vulnerability of actual huts, open to the wind, the rain and the cold.  Rabbi Sacks called Sukkot a “seminar in happiness,” because when you sit in a shack, exposed to all the elements, you can still experience joy.  When you’re surrounded by God and by the people you love, you have everything. An open roof, an open door, an open heart.  

CHAG SAMEACH