By Michael R. Mantell, PhD
SAN DIEGO — Beginning on the evening of Sunday, September 27, 2015 until a week later, many people will leave the security, warmth, beauty and permanence of their large, expensive, well appointed, nicely manicured homes. They will retreat into a simple, sometimes wobbly, unpretentious temporary shelter, covered by nothing more than branches, bamboo, palm fronds or any other material that comes from a living source.
Huts in La Jolla? Rancho Santa Fe? Del Mar? Del Cerro? Santee? Whaaaaat? What’s the neighborhood coming to?
Don’t worry. It’s Sukkot around the world, so why should San Diego be any different? Or for that matter, why shouldn’t there be Sukkahs in La Jolla, Carmel Valley Highlands, Rancho Santa Fe, Del Cerro, Bonita or in every neighborhood where Jews live in and around San Diego?
Then again, why should we leave the warmth, comfort and deceptive security of our homes, condos and apartments and eat – and for some, sleep – in an inherently provisional, minimalist, seemingly unprotected hut? Are there health reasons, if not spiritual meaning, to doing so? What can we really get out of this experience besides perhaps catching a cold or giving our neighbors reason to think we’ve lost our minds?
If there is one reason we would be wise to fulfill the “mitzvah” of Sukkot and “dwell” in a Sukkah, it is, in the words of Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, “to demythologize solid walls and controllable security…not a renunciation of self-protection but a recognition of its limits…to accept vulnerability and live more deeply…to teach builders of homes that we can give them up and move out if necessary…so that people become masters rather than slaves of their achievements when they develop the capacity to let go of their accomplishments, even if only for the moment.” He adds, “The Sukkah provides a corrective to the natural tendency of becoming excessively attached to turf.”
The emotional benefit to Sukkot, then, can be dramatic and quite profound, especially in a society in which so much emphasis is placed on what you have, what you drive, what you wear, how you look, how you smell, what your home looks like what you earn and how much stuff you can amass. This “holiday” becomes even more important to parents who are desperately trying to teach their children good values surrounded by a society that competes with those values by teaching the belief that having more is what makes you a winner.
Let’s look at a bit of history to understand the deeper health benefits that can come to those who put their bodies and souls into the Sukkah. Recall that Sukkot celebrates the experience our ancestors had of traveling for forty years in the desert surrounded by G-d’s presence through the “Clouds of Glory.”
Building a Sukkah and “dwelling in it” allows us to relive the experience of being surrounded by His presence without other distractions and “demythologizing” – letting go – of the illusion that material security protects us. If we pay close attention to the deeper message, we can learn that the feeling of security and stability with which our possessions seem to provide us, is short-lived and transitory at best. A well-respected Torah scholar, Tzipporah Heller, put it this way, “The only enduring possession that any of us have is our essence. Still, the illusion of permanence is one that we are reluctant to surrender, because, with it, we feel as if we are abandoned to an unknowable fate.”
The Sukkah forces us to face reality. It may well be a reality we do not want to face, but we must face it nevertheless. What we think is real and solid is not. What we think is temporary and short-lived is not. Sukkot tells us to stop and get a grip on reality. Jewish reality. Correct the picture we spend 51 weeks a year looking at and see that the seeming impermanence of this one-week we call Sukkot is in reality what permanence is all about. By relying on the protection of G-d as did our ancestors in their 40-year journey through the desert, this one week teaches us that as He provided for them, He constantly provides for us as well.
By “dwelling” in the Sukkah, dining in it, putting ourselves inside of it for one week, we can see the deeper emotional insight that our life in this world is temporary, just as our dwelling in the Sukkah is short-lived.
We don’t take all of our possessions in the Sukkah, just as we don’t take all of our possessions with us after this life. In the Sukkah, we have everything that is really important to us…our family, our friends and our G-d. What else do we really need on this journey?
By leaving our homes to experience vulnerability we remind ourselves who really protects us. We move from “the certainty of fixed position to the liberating insecurity of freedom.” By placing our confidence in what has been the only source of security for our people for more than 3,000 years, by entering the Sukkah, our children and we learn — through reenacting our original act of faith in the desert – what has been true all along. We are in G-d’s Sukkah and always have been.
This is the mind-body health message that can sustain us through the 51 other weeks. This is the emotional message our children, hopefully, will learn the next time they believe they will “die” without the next “hot” computerized toy.
Good Yom Tov.
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Dr Michael Mantell, based in San Diego, provides coaching to business leaders, athletes, individuals and families to reach breakthrough levels of success and significance in their professional and personal lives. Mantell may be contacted via michael.mantell@sdjewishworld.com