The Courage to be Temporary
Rabbi Deborah Wechsler
“So wait a second,” my old friend from college says.
“This sukkah is maybe ten feet from your door” – that’s right I say.
“It’s freezing cold outside and you’re wearing a jacket and a hat” – that’s right I say.
“And yesterday, the roof blew off because of the strong winds here” – yup I say.
“There is only a single light bulb and I can’t tell exactly what I’m eating” – that’s right I say.
“And I think there’s a pine needle in my soup” – entirely possible I reply.
“And you are going to be doing this for the next week” – I certainly hope so I say.
Then she shakes her head and says, “Didn’t you tell me Sukkot was your favorite holiday?”
When you put it that way I guess it sounds crazy. We have beautiful homes, into which we gaze from our Sukkot. Homes with solid roofs and heating and this year air conditioning. Where the only thing in the soup is the croutons. And yet we voluntarily leave all that for a week to move into our Sukkot.
Maybe it would make more sense if our Sukkot were located farther away, a few hours or a few days journey so that the need to go outside and away was more pronounced.
Like many other endeavors, the well thought out, well prepared for, and meaningful flip side of crazy is courageous. That is what strikes me about building and dwelling in a sukkah – how extraordinary it is to find the courage within ourselves to leave what is permanent for what is temporary. To have faith that there might be something richer, something better than what we currently have if only we are willing to make a substantial sacrifice.
And it is a sacrifice, even with the most gorgeous weather in the world, it is not easy to pick up our lives and move them out doors. It is physically difficult, financially burdensome, and just plain inconvenient. But we do it not just because we are commanded, not just because we like it, but because we know that sometimes big risks pay off with big rewards.
My roommate from college, her husband and three boys who attend the Schechter School in West Hartford, Connecticut recently returned from a year’s sabbatical in Sydney, Australia. He is a professor of Political science specializing in the Arab Israeli conflict. They pulled their kids out of schools, put their things in storage, and moved more than halfway around the globe. I asked them enviously why they did it when it was obviously an incredibly difficult task to uproot their lives and their kids’ lives.
They shared that that they thought living abroad would be a rich experience and that the notions of temporary and permanent interacted a lot. They knew their year was temporary, but you can’t live temporarily for that long so you put down roots intentionally or not. Especially being so far from family at Rosh Hashanah and Pesah, they sought out the community that they created in Sydney of others who shared their journey.
One reason they wanted to go abroad, even to a pro-US country, was to look at their home from elsewhere.
This to me is the perfect metaphor for Sukkot. It is a unique opportunity to go outside our homes and be able to look at them from a different vantage point. For this week we see what others see when they come to our homes and that insight will sometimes let us continue the repair work of the Yamim Noraim.
I shared my friends’ experiences with Ann and Avi Rubin, one of our Chizuk Amuno and Krieger Schechter families who did something similar and went off to spend a Sabbatical year in Israel. I asked Avi to share some of their feelings about leaving for a year. Perhaps because it is “the season” he tied it in with the motifs of the High Holidays. This is part of his letter to me:
“While there is much comfort to be taken in what is permanent: security, habits, routines, predictability, there are also advantages to what is temporary. When things go well here in Israel, we tell the children to cherish and enjoy the experience. When things are difficult and challenging, we tell them that this is only for a short amount of time, and that their regular lives and their friends are waiting for them when we get home. Adversity is not as intimidating when it is temporary. In fact, we turn it into a positive. "Thank g-d we don't have to deal with this kind of a problem back home, in our regular lives", or we think of a way to describe our daily challenges in humorous ways for our next blog posting. That sometimes takes the edge off.
A temporary existence would not be enjoyable if it were permanent. But taking a break from a good life for a year gives you the luxury of making mistakes without worrying about them, knowing that all of your current day to day problems are part of an "experience", and you always have that permanent life to look forward to when it is over. Interestingly, even if you weren't always that happy in your permanent life, once you are in a more difficult temporary state, you appreciate your permanent life even more, and you tend to remember and long for the positives in your permanent life, forgetting the unpleasant minutia that invariably accompany our existence.
Was it brave to do what we did? Actually, I think we took the easy road. This year, we can do no wrong. This year, all our mistakes will be forgiven, forgotten and undone. We get to reboot our lives when we come back to the States. The net effect is that the kids (and the parents) will have life-long lasting memories, fluency in Hebrew, and a year like no other. Is it going to be hard at times? Sure, but the pain will be temporary. Our permanent lives will be the same, only richer for the experience.”
What a wonderful metaphor for the week of Sukkot and what we hope it will be. We create wonderful memories for our families of both hardship and pleasure. Even the challenges of Sukkot become part of the story we tell – Remember the year that the hurricane blew our sukkah into the neighbor’s yard? Remember the year that the raccoon set up shop in the sukkah and we had to call animal control? Remember the year Dad got poison ivy from cutting down the wrong skhakh? Remember the year your kids tried sleeping in the sukkah and ended up creeping back inside at 4am?
Without question there is courage involved in picking up our lives and moving outside of our homes for a week. But we have faith that leaving what is permanent for what is temporary will bring us a rich treasure trove of memory and ritual that will be part of the fabric of our Jewish lives forever.
Hag Sameyach!
