From Rosh Hashannah to Sukkot

On Rosh Hashannah we stand before God in his unity. He is present, and we are not. As we crown him as King, we realize that our lives, and indeed the entire world, are not necessary, are forfeit. Yet somehow we are allowed to be present to witness the majesty of the King of Kings as it exists prior to creation, and somehow he allows us to exist.

This vision to which we are witness is very real, but it is not yet part of the world that we live in, not part of the world of our daily experience.

Yom Kippur is the experience of our first turning from this vision of divine perfection to again look upon our lives. We are immediately struck by the realization that nothing we have done lives up to this vision. Everything is found lacking.

We turn to our maker and ask him to repair what we have broken, repair our bodies, minds, and souls, so that we can be vehicles for the vision of perfection that he has revealed to us. To our amazement, he accedes.

We come in to Sukkot with new eyes, a fresh soul. God tells us - take this opportunity, while you are still so wide-eyed and childlike, to look at my world. Look at everything I created. Isn't it wonderful?

We spend a week appreciating every expression of life.

In the Sukkah we appreciate space itself. In the intrinsic flimsiness of the Sukkah and the limited time that we spend in it, we appreciate each moment of time, unique and unrecoverable. With the 4 species, we appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of each piece of fruit, each branch of each tree. In the Hashannah prayers we appreciate every expression of Godliness we perceive, every aspect of Jerusalem, every way we understand ourselves, every created thing, its beauty, and its weakness.

During Sukkot, we are given the opportunity to fall in love with every little piece of the entire world. I think this is the joy of Sukkot - the joy of knowing that every place, every moment, and every thing is an incomparable gift from the incomparable One.