Sermons 2023 High Holidays

 Sermons 2023 High Holidays

 

Sukkot Dvar Torah 2023

Elisha Gechter 

Tishrei, the Hebrew month which we now find ourselves in, is full of dichotomies. We start with High holy days - the days of awe - which are now behind us, and we’ve entered into a week of festivities termed “the time of our joy” - “zman simchateynu.” We’ve gone from a much more spiritual part of Tishrei to a much more physical part of Tishrei. Maybe you could even say from a heaver, more serious time to a lighter or more lighthearted time. In fact we will read the Book of Kohelet next week to remind us not to let the lightheartedness get to our heads too much, and to remember to stay grounded during our time of joy. Tishrei bridges from the ethereal experiences of praying, fasting and reflecting on who we are being in the world, back to the physicality and the practicality of everyday life. We build an outdoor space to eat in, we take lulav and etrog, we’re marking the harvest, our gratitude, our history of living in sukkot in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt in this very tangible manner.

And this bridge from the spiritual to the physical mirrors in many ways our ancestors’ experience. The physical sukkot were present at a time when the Nation of Israel transitioned from the miracles of the Exodus to the practical side of surviving in the desert for 40 years. Commentators explain that there would have been no way that the Israelites could have taken a direct and fast route to Eretz Yisrael, they would never have been ready to enter the holy land without such a transition. I said the physical sukkot they lived in, but you may be familiar with the Talmudic debate about whether sukkot references actual huts, which is Rabbi Akiva’s opinion in the debate, the machloket, or references the ananei hakavod -God’s protective clouds of glory, which hovered above the Israelites throughout their sojourn in the wilderness which is  Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion. Another dichotomy in Tishrei.

Now maybe for you, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur wasn’t so different from sukkot and this second half of Tishrei. Maybe for you, those days were a time of joy, and maybe this binary I am setting up is false. It was a great joy to me that this year my children sat next to me for most of the High Holiday prayers. My 11 year old daughter Zoe made a comment to me in the middle of Yom Kippur when the minyan burst into jubilant song - “wait Ema aren’t we supposed to be sad today?” and I explained it is serious, we are pleading for our lives, but that Judaism has always been good at holding competing emotions and complexity and the Day of Atonement is about our fragile future but isn’t only solemn. 

It is false to say that there is a true dichotomy between the spiritual and physical in Judaism, rather we are anchored on the idea that we can have both at every moment and they aren't in competition with each other. We’re invited to bring holiness into any moment with our rituals, our kavanot/intentions, our brachot/blessings, our very chagim/holidays. Some people don’t see sukkot as wildly distinct from Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Instead, they use the structure of the sukkot as a place to practice the things they said they expressed wanting to change on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. There is a custom that is said to have started with the 16th-century Kabbalist Rabbi Moses Cordovero to be careful with the words we utter under the roof of the sukkah, the schach. If we perceive that we are sitting right beneath shechina/ananei hakavod, God’s presence, Rabbi Eliezer’s view, we should engage in positive even spiritual exchanges, that leaves us and others honored. It’s almost like a sophisticated version of playing house - when you were young and you got to try out different roles in imaginary play, on sukkot you get to be an adult who is striving to be your best self and to test drive in a focused manner what that can feel and look like, even by just starting with something as simple but as foundational as speech, or as deep as our al chet’s took us in our Yom Kippur liturgy. And maybe that is what can bring us so much joy - the chance to live intentionally into our teshuva/repentance for a whole focused week.

Rav Kook beautifully writes in his book Ma'amrei HaRa'ayah about the sukkah as a place of practice, of imagination and of tikkun, repair, when it comes specifically to unity, to bringing together disparate factions of people, bringing together disparate parts of ourselves. 

He quotes from Torah and Gemara - 

“Every Israelite citizen shall dwell in Sukkot” (Vayikra 23:42) – “This teaches that all Israel

should dwell in one Sukkah” (Talmud Sukkah 27b).

And goes on to say “that as long as the chains of our wrongdoings are tied to our lives, it is not possible to hope for harmony between divergent perspectives, or for the unity of Shalom.

…But after the light of Teshuvah has appeared in our world, through the sanctity of the holy day, Yom Kippur, and all Israel are purified from the illness of wrongdoing, the purity

of our souls strengthens within us, and the divergent perspectives are unified more and

more.

And when the holy festival of Sukkot comes, the light of Torah, the illumination of awe for

the Divine and love of the truth suffuse our entire essence, and unify all perspectives and

Ideas.”

A very mystical approach around how the holidays of Tishrei prepare us for bringing together community, for being our true and full selves. After atoning, with our clean slates, we’re ready to be present to difference, because we’ve cleared away the noise that usually gets in our way for such tolerance. 

Now, my children told me that the best dvar torahs are ones that include stories, so I want to share a story with you about tolerance. The 18th century Ukranian Hassidic Rabbi, Reb Zusha, and his family were rather poor. Once, before Sukkot, he didn’t have any money at all to buy the four species so he sold his pair of very precious tefillin and bought an incredible etrog with the money. When his wife found out, she was really upset. She said to her husband - “how could you sell your precious tefillin, which you wear every weekday, for a mitzvah that lasts only one week?” And in that moment of frustration and upset she took the etrog and bit off its end, rendering it ritually useless. So let’s all imagine ourselves in Reb Zusha’s place and how upset you might be in that moment, or how defensive. Well we are not Rebbe Zusha. Because Reb Zusha, did not react with upset, but rather with calm and with love. He stood before his partner and he understood where she was coming from, and he didn’t defend himself. And since this is a Chassidic tale, the end of the story is that a message from Heaven reached Reb Zusha,  saying that his silence after what his wife did was more special in Heaven than his devotion in selling his tefillin to purchase the etrog. The story teaches us an amazing way to think about people and about mitzvot - even though Reb Zusha now couldn’t fulfill the mitzvah of arbaat haminin - the four species, nor tefillin for that matter, his intentions were not only about making sure he could do what was correct with the laws, but making sure he could try and do what was correct by the people in his life.

This story which teaches tolerance, love and understanding, is in contrast to a famous midrash that compares the plurality of the Jewish people to the arbat haminim, the four species. The etrog’s good smell and taste represent good deeds and good learning, and the aravot’s, the willow, lack of taste or smell represents no good deeds nor any learning. In Yeshivat Chovivei Torah’s Sukkot Reader this year Rabbanit Yaffa Aronoff of Jerusalem looks at the midrash with discomfort, saying it might be teaching us a negative lesson to be in the business of assessing ourselves and others for good deeds - that’s God’s job not ours. And even more so, Rabbanit Yaffa says, we can’t actually think of people like plants - we’re not a part of nature that can be neatly categorized. We are messy, we aren’t all good or bad, we are all on a journey. However, she notes that the midrash concludes with God saying that everyone should join themselves into one group in order to atone for the other. So if the perfect etrog, the perfect person, needs to atone, then we can understand that no one is actually perfect, because we are real people, and we are complex. You can’t put us in a box, that is not the idea of dwelling in sukkot either.

One last story - this one from my father’s childhood. He grew up in Philadelphia and leading up to his 1955 Bar Mitzvah his parents sent him to lessons with the rabbi at the Conservative shul. But that Rabbi must not have ever heard a dvar torah like this because he did not treat my father with much care. Instead he would push play on a tape recorder and have my father listen to that in his office while the rabbi took a phone call in the same room and turned his back. When Sukkot time rolled around my father heard that the rabbi was inviting only his favorite students into the sukkah - and my father was not in that group. This rabbi was in the business of categorizing people, putting them in boxes, and he missed an opportunity to include someone creative and soulful like my Abba. It wasn’t until my father was an adult that he learned a sukkah is open to everyone, and is not supposed to be an exclusive place, but rather an inclusive one. And luckily he was able to let go of that past and bring into his present a very joyful approach to the holiday, getting wrapped up in the idea of beautifying the mitzvot of Sukkot.

I think we all know that a sukkah is not built for favorites, and that a sukkah is just a shell without people in it. Without our welcoming posture, without our tolerance for those who are different, without our striving to be the best versions of ourselves, this holiday is meaningless.

So I’m stepping away from the dichotomy of Tishrei that I started with, and instead I’m stepping into its name of Chodesh Hashvii, the 7th month. The Lubavitcher Rebbe says that  in addition to meaning simply the “seventh month,” chodesh hashvii also means the “sated month” from the root of the word sheva, related to the word sovah, satiation. 

I want to bless us that we can bring that feeling of enoughness, of joy, of complexity, of balance, tolerance and pluralism - of our need to be with each other, to be in it together, to the rest of the chag and to the rest of our year.

 

Shmini Atzeret 2023 Elisha Gechter

 

Last Sunday, we sat in our Somerville sukkah with guests, lingering over a meal, and pondering, when we finished, if they would brave the 45 minute walk back to Cambridge port, or stay till the end of yontiv, the holiday, for us to drive them home. One friend asked, “well, what time is it?” and the other 4 adults in the sukkah all had the same response - “it’s yontiv o’clock,” - meaning, what does it matter what time it is today, a day when we’re resting from our normal modes of being?

 

The way that we use our time on Shabbat and Chagim stands in sharp contrast to the way we are often in relationship with time on a non-holy day. And yet, for some of us we don’t even feel free of such constraints on a day like today. Last night I was rushing to light candles by 5:59, today I rushed my family out the door to get to shul, and after this we’re going to scurry back home to meet someone in our sukkah for lunch. Now as you can tell from what I just said, I am someone whose usual mode is rushing, however, I do get present to the cadence of our holy days - case in point, I get my best reading done on Shabbat and yontiv.

 

If this invitation to a slower pace is the gift of any chag (holiday), that’s even more true for Shmini Atzeret. Rosh Hashana has shofar blowing, Yom Kippur has atonening, Sukkot has shaking the four species, and Shmini Atzeret has lingering. During Chol Hamoed I was in a sukkah with my friend Ben Soloway and he said he loves Shmini Atzeret so much, maybe more than is normal, because it’s about taking time to come down from the high of all the chagim, and just hang out with God, with each other, for one more special day. To stay a little longer, to linger. This concept of the holiday is based on the famous Midrash from Rashi’s commentary (the medieval French rabbi) where he interprets atzeret to mean holding back. The parable is that God is like a royal parent saying to a child who has been for a visit and is about to leave “Please, stay with me for one more day; it is so hard for me to part with you!” (Rashi on Lev. 23:36). We, and Rashi, can imagine the times when there was a Beit Hamikdash, the holy temple, and Sukkot was a pilgrimage festival when people flocked to Jerusalem. Then the addition of Shemini Atzeret delayed their departure by one more day, allowing them to revel in such an ingathering.

 

While that is a beautiful understanding of the holiday, it’s not something that we get straight from the text of the Torah, and the rabbis of the Mishna, Talmud and beyond weren’t totally sure what to make of Shmini Atzeret. There is no explanation for the meaning or reason behind the holiday other than the word atzeret, and there are multiple ways to interpret that word. Some say it means “solemn gathering,” or “assembly,” or that  it comes from the word atzar, meaning “stop,” referring either to the commandment to not to any work, or to the idea of stopping/ending the holiday of Sukkot. Or Atzeret in this context can mean an extension of the prior seven days. Our earliest rabbinic reference to Shemini Atzeret calls it yom tov aharon shel ha-hag, the last day of the festival, however the Gemara (Taanit 20b-31a) later categorizes it as a festival in its own right, distinguishing Shmini Atzeret from Sukkot by noting the 70 temple sacrifices given throughout Sukkot and only 1 given on Shemini Atzeret.

 

We get yet another interpretation of atzeret from Samson Raphael Hirsch, a 19th-century German Orthodox rabbi, who translates it as “to gather” or “to store up.” On this eighth day of Sukkot, he says, it’s our last day of celebration for quite some time, and we need to store up the feelings we’ve been experiencing throughout Tishrei to get us through the next 6 months, at which time we’ll be able to celebrate Pesach. 

 

But if this image of storing up leaves you feeling more frenzied than tranquil, like a squirrel preparing for winter, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, President of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, has a podcast called Soulful Jewish Living where he gives us some tips on how to get into the mode of Shmini Atzeret, the holiday teaching us to slow down and linger. I want to offer you his practices of lingering that we might be able to take on today; Perhaps over your lunch you want to try slowing down as you eat, noting the color, texture, taste of your food. Or maybe you want to slow down as you walk out of or home from shul - as you change your pace, notice what moving a little slower feels like. Or maybe today is a day you want to try and linger with a friend or a significant other for a moment of connection, of listening, before rushing off to where you think you need to go.

 

Similarly, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat Renewal rabbi and author in the Berkshires, views Shmini Atzeret as “one more chance to engage in intimate connection with Shekhinah, the immanent and indwelling Presence of God. This is a day for spaciousness, a day of pausing, a day to celebrate the white space which cradles and contains all of the texts and teachings and observances of the holiday season now ending.”

 

For some people, staying connected to the shechina, or to the white spaces that hold our texts together, means being in the sukkah for a last day of meals. But not for everyone. I grew up in a home where we wanted to savor every moment in the sukkah, even though we depended on the kindness of friends or the shul sukkah since we lived in an apartment building. We often held our breath to see if our hosts would at least say kiddush in the sukkah, if not eat the whole Shmini Atzeret meal there. Correspondingly, there is a Talmudic debate about eating in the sukkah on Shmini Atzeret, and if one can say a bracha, a blessing, for doing so. The Rif, 11th century Talmudic commentator (Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi), says that making a bracha on Shemini Atzeret would lead to a contradiction: If it is a day of sitting in the sukkah, then it is not Shemini Atzeret, and if it is Shemini Atzeret, then it is not a day of sitting in the sukkah! Since there is a doubt, we act stringently on both fronts - we eat in the sukkah, but make no bracha  (Sukka 22b-23a). 

 

It’s a day with contradictions, a day that marks the difficulty of separating from a big experience. 

When Sam and I got married we upheld our family tradition of having a brunch the next morning for our family and out of town guests. It wasn’t the main event of the weekend, but it very much felt like a continuation of the previous day's celebration. It felt like we had a chance to linger with each other a bit more as we came down from the intensity of the wedding ceremony and reception. The brunch was a transition to our lives as newlyweds, starting to practice what we learned about healthy relationships. It basically encapsulated all of the atzeret interpretations we covered today. It was a day we did no work, it was a day of assembling and uniting with many people in our lives, it was a time to store up the feeling of being surrounded by so much love. But most importantly it helped us to transition.

 

As much as Shmini Atzeret gives us the gift of mindful lingering which we can carry into the rest of the year, I think it can also give us the gift of asking; where else in my life do I need to build in time to frame and mark a transition? Today helps us cap all of Tishrei with ritual and allows us right now to also ask, what am I doing to ritualize other things in my life that are winding down, that are restarting, that are changing? As a lover of Mayyim Hayyim, the community mikvah/ritual bath and education center, I know that to be a place that helps me immensely in doing transitioning intentionally.

I want to end with one final take on something we already discussed because I came across a new interpretation of Rashi’s Midrash about the parent and children. Dr. Susan Hornstein, a fellow rabbi-in-training at Maharat, cites a close reading of the words in Hebrew - “קָשָׁה עָלַי פְּרֵדַתְכֶם” “your separation is hard for me.” If it was about God and people separating it should say “our separation.” Rather, the Midrash depicts God as eager to have the Jewish people not separate from one another. After a week of togetherness, what’s bothering God, what God is hoping to delay is the threat to our opportunities for unity. “Everyone goes back to their day-to-day, segregated existence… this… is the tragedy that God seeks to postpone by holding onto the unity for one extra day.”                                 

May we be blessed to hold onto that opportunity for longer than today. 

Chag Lingering and Transitioning Sameach