Rabbi David Wolpe's reflections from his 'Off The Pulpit' column are available in the Resource Libraries. Read and be inspired by his thoughts on Sukkot as we end the holiday.
Acts of Love
The Talmudic sages enumerate three great miracles in the desert. First was the manna, which fed the wandering Israelites. Miriam's well provided water. And there was the covering of clouds that offered shade. One interpretation of the sukkah is that it commemorates the cloud covering in the desert. The Steipler Gaon asks an intriguing question and gives a beautiful answer.
Why of all three miracles does only the cloud covering deserve a holiday? There is no festival of the manna or the water, only Sukkot remembering the clouds. His answer is that the manna and the water were necessary; without them Israel could not survive. But the cloud covering was an act of love. Festivals — the liberation of Pesach, the gift of Torah on Shavuot — are tokens of God's love. A ring must be offered under the Chuppah, because a gift is not necessary, but rather a mark of love.
Sustenance alone is not enough; love finds its expression in offering more than the beloved needs. Love is lavish; no parent is satisfied to give a child only what she needs. Love overspills boundaries, whether spreading a blanket on a sleeping child or covering the desert with clouds.
What You Need to Live
The Talmud has some advice: “A disciple of the wise may not live in a city which lacks one of the following ten things: a court, a charity-treasury with two collectors and three distributors, a synagogue, a public bathhouse, sanitary services, a physician, an artisan, a barber, a butcher and a teacher of the young.” (Sanhedrin 17b)
If you ask your child or your friend “What can you not live without?” after they realize that “iPod,” “TV,” “Computer” and “cellphone” are actually inadequate answers, they might come close to the list the rabbis compiled two thousand years ago. The tricky thing about technology is that we come to think of it not as artificial but natural. The elevator coming when we press the button seems as certain as the sun rising — and almost as surprising when it fails. But the holiday of Sukkot, when we dwell in artificial and temporary huts, reminds us what is real and what ultimately sustains us.
Sitting in the sukkah, surrounded by food, learning, community and a view of the heavens is an important corrective to the gilded boxes in which we spend most of our lives. Justice, charity, community, medicine, education and reverence — these are the things human beings cannot live without, then and now.
