(Delivered October 17, 2024)

Four days later, we choose exile. 

I wrote those words twelve years ago, as I tried to map the arc of the fall chaggim in relationship to the narrative arc of Jewish history. On Rosh Hashanah the world is created, and our story begins. On Yom Kippur we fall spectacularly from grace as if from Gan Eden itself. We reckon with our human frailties and weaknesses, with the ways we will never quite be good enough. And we find ourselves, four days later, fully invested in the impermanence of life. 

The book of Kohelet accompanies us through these seven days of embracing the elements. Where Yom Kippur liturgy reminded us that human life is brief, vanishing like a curl of smoke when the wind blows hard enough; by the time we get to Sukkot, we say, OK let the wind blow. We’ll build some walls, the best we can, we’ll invite friends and strangers into our flimsy shelters. We’ll eat and we’ll drink and we’ll sing, we’ll peek at the full moon between the branches. 

That curl of smoke from Unetaneh Tokef? By the time Sukkot rolls around, we’ve almost made peace with it. 

הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים אָמַר קֹהֶלֶת הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים הַכֹּל הָבֶל׃

Total vanity, Kohelet says. Total vanity. Everything is vanity.

This year feels vainer than most, this year it feels at times as if a whole world is vanishing with that curl of smoke. Will we ever recover a sense of safety and wholeness? Or will the simmering rage and violence boil over yet again?

הַכֹּל הָבֶל

It’s all temporary, and will vanish like a fever dream. 

Meanwhile, here we are.

Sukkot tells us that the meanwhile is the point. Zman simchateinu—the time of our joy. We are commanded to rejoice for seven days before God. Today we are here together. We won’t wait until life is perfect and calm and orderly again before we rejoice. Today is the day. As we sang in Hallel: 

זֶה־הַיּוֹם עָשָׂה יי נָגִילָה וְנִשְׂמְחָה בוֹ

This is the day God has made: let’s rejoice and be glad in it.

This day today. This is the one we have. As long as we have voices to sing with, minds to think with. As long as we have each other, we will find the joy lurking in the marrow of the hardest moments. 

Elsewhere, Kohelet teaches, famously, that there is a time for everything: a time for birth, a time for death, a time for planting, a time for uprooting. A time for killing and a time for healing. A philosopher-king in a melancholy mood, Kohelet says: whatever you see or think or feel right now, wait. It will change. It always does. Investing yourself in keeping everything the same is a fools’ strategy.

In the words of the great Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai: 

A man doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn’t have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there’s time for everything.

I often say—and I’ve probably said it more often this year than in every prior year combined—that our joy is our secret weapon. As Jews, we live in a state of paradox. It’s not for nothing that some of our happiest songs are in minor keys. Our story is one of constant persecution, anxiety, and isolation. Also our story is one of incredible growth and triumph, punctuated by occasional catastrophe. Both of these are true. Life has never been unambiguously easy for us, and when the short view looks terrible, we look toward the long view. Every time we say the Amidah, we are locating ourselves in a line that goes all the way back to Abraham. If the God of Abraham came through for him, we may yet find our way through the current catastrophe.

On Sukkot, we grab hold of what remains and say, yes it’s awful, but let’s go outside and feel the sharp wind on our faces. We’re alive and that is all there is right now.