Building a Sukkah

I have to admit that Sukkot is one holiday I was not entirely prepared for. I don't know what a Sukkah is - well, basically, I do, but I can't say I understand entirely the concept - and, quite frankly, or, more to the point, it scares me. Which is why I think it is something that I should do, or at least help someone else to do. And yet, I totally failed in causing this to come about.

It was not for lack of opportunity. It was weeks ago that someone first mentioned the idea of helping build a Sukkah, and it came up repeatedly since then, but I found that, on each occasion, I found some excuse not to go. Finally, I spoke to a friend on Friday, and we made some sort of arrangement for me to accompany her to help with a sukkah-building, but bad communication ensued, and I did not get the information I needed to get there.

All I had when I woke up on Sunday (today) October 12th was the knowledge that right then, on that day, thousands of Jews were building Sukkahs on a beautiful day in the East Bay, and a strong desire to join them, but no actual, definitive plans to do so.

So what did I do? I waited for my friend to call me, and she never did. That's because she had left her phone at home, and assumed that I had gotten her email, which I hadn't, because I was waiting for her to call me. So there it goes.

I had to be content with building something, metaphorically, in my own mind. But what I really wanted to be doing was building something with my hands. I wanted to be involved in a group activity that involved several people working together to build a physical structure that eventually would come to mean something. It made me yearn slightly for my college days, working in the theatre, where I enjoyed nothing more than walking around a pile of planks with a power drill, putting pieces of wood together to make a stage set. Or using power saws or a chainsaw to carve pieces of woo into the exact right shape so that someone could come along and say, "I know what that is." It's process and product. It's something you can't do on a computer, and you can't do it alone. It's a communal activity, and the result is something you can't see, but it is evident all the same, and everyone knows its there.

A friend at work made a comment recently that he fasted this past Yom Kippur, which he hadn't done in a while, and even though he hadn't felt strongly about it at the outset, he found that it had some definite effects on his mind, in how it made him think about his actions, his eating, and how it made him aware of controlling his desires for a certain purpose. I had the same feeling. And I think a similar result occurs with building a Sukkah, as with all physical actions we take up in Judaism.

And some of those actions may seem random. I mean, after all, why build a temporary structure in your back yard and live in it for several days? I mean, the Torah can tell us why, and tradition can give us all kinds of reasons, but really, why? The answer is, nobody really knows. All we really know, is that we do it because we are told to do it. But the way I see it, it's kind of like a parent telling a child to do something. Maybe the child doesn't really know why he or she is being told to clean his room. All he knows is that if he doesn't, he won't get his allowance, or some other such bonus. So he does it. And he finds out, later in life, that the real reward was not his allowance in that moment, but rather a sense of duty, of fulfilling obligations, of having discipline, and also having a clean room, or a clean house. And all of these things benefit not just him, but everyone around him. Or her.

It's the same with a Sukkah, I believe. The result is, immediately, a concrete structure. But that in itself is not the only reward. The reward is also the community you build along with it. It's the symbolism of the "four species," and the satisfaction that comes with building something with your own hands, no matter how simple, or how temporary. Because all of our lives our temporary. We build them with our hands, live in them for a while, and after that, our souls go back to a more permanent place, to the eternity from which they came. These bodies are our Sukkahs, this planet a beautiful desert, teeming with life and danger, for which we should be fantastically grateful for the privilege to inhabit for even the shortest period of time. For we are the luckiest we could ever be. Right now. In this moment. No matter how bad things around us may seem. And we must always remember, too, that we do not build our lives alone. It takes many hands, and the help and guidance of others, even as we help them. We must remember to let other people in sometimes, and not shut them out and try to live in our Sukkahs alone. Because when we do that, then we truly become less than we could be, and we don't live up to the commandments to live, to enjoy life, and to be a part of the human community.

So if anyone wants to help me build a Sukkah, this year, or any year, feel free. And thank you to all my friends and neighbors who have been there to help me build this Sukkah of my life, which I am grateful to have for this tiny little time that I am here.