Sukkot reminds us of fragility of life

It's autumn again. Most of us are fixated on football and foliage and we're gearing up (already!) for Halloween, Thanksgiving and the winter gift-giving holidays. And a tiny yet tenacious group of people is putting up flimsy booths in order to fulfill a biblical commandment; a commandment rich in meanings it has taken on over the past 3,000 years or so.
To the Christian world, the time is known as Tabernacles, but to the Jews who invented it, it's known as Sukkot, the Hebrew word for booths (singular: sukkah).
Leviticus 23:42-43 tells us to build a booth and live in it for seven days, outside our house. The reason given is so that we will remember that when we left Egypt as freed slaves, we lived in these humble abodes throughout our trek across the wilderness. It's a great reminder: Live in a shaky, thin booth for a week and you get an idea of what it was like to scrape by with not much more than a revelation and a promise.
Booth-living varies
Sukkot is celebrated by Jews all around the world, but as a general rule reflecting the reality of this hemisphere, the farther north you go, the fewer people build the booths, let alone live in them at this time of year. But in Israel, the rains have not yet started and the winds don't blow so cold yet. You'll see a few sukkot in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys. In parts of Cleveland, you can see more.
But in Jerusalem at this time of year, they pop up everywhere, and it's more common to find people really living, eating and sleeping in the sukkah. Just a casual walk around Jerusalem yields the sight of many, many sukkot. Rich people build them, poor people build them, we all spend time in them. And they serve as a great equalizer: all of us exposed to the elements, all of us observing the directive to see how delicate life is.
We eat our meals for the week in the sukkah, so it's good if you don't build it too far from the kitchen. When my family lived in Jerusalem in a fourth-floor walk-up apartment, we had to plan our meals pretty carefully so as to avoid making too many trips upstairs. We had a simple prefabricated sukkah. Others made theirs more elaborately. The walls can be made of fabric or of fairly solid material, but the tops are always of loose vegetation. The rules stipulate that the sukkah has to have enough open spaces above that you can see a few stars at night (if they're there). The best thing around here for the roofs is cornstalks, but a large bamboo mat will do nicely.
Meanings of holiday
Each of the three "pilgrimage" holidays, Pesach (Passover), Shavu'ot (Pentecost) and Sukkot, has an agricultural, historic and religious meaning.
Agriculturally, Sukkot reminds us of the harvest season. People were so involved in the harvest that they literally lived in the fields. They built booths to sleep in so they wouldn't waste any time going back home at night. It was serious business to get the grape, olive, and autumn fruit crops harvested in time.
Historically, as I mentioned, it recalls our accommodations in the wilderness.
Religiously, we are reminded of the Creator's help in the harvest, that our revelation came at a dear price, and that life is fragile. In a year such as this, when hurricanes and earthquakes have shown nature's full powers, we need little reminder of how precarious life can be. Perhaps you might think it superfluous to live in a booth. But we do it every year, regardless of the weather's messages.
The three elements came together in post-biblical times: With the fall harvest over and some money in their pockets, people headed to Jerusalem for a week of religious celebration. Offering sacrifices was serious but there was a lot of fun to be had in the annual gathering as well.
Changing importance
That was then. Today, the major gatherings -- the most attended services of the year -- come right before Sukkot. On Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement, you can expect to see the synagogues full, as over the years they have assumed the mantle of the High Holy Days, the most important days in the Jewish calendar. They signify a season of solemn remembrance, and of creation, revelation and redemption. If there are but three days in a year that a Jew will go to synagogue nowadays, it's on those days that just passed. But in the days when the Temple stood, they were a warm-up to the big holiday: Sukkot.
Sukkot ties us to our roots, as well as sets our vision toward the future. One of the requirements in building a sukkah is that the walls not be so tall as to prevent a view such as the pillar of cloud with which the Lord led us through the desert. At a moment's notice, if the cloud were to reappear, the Israelites would pull up stakes and get moving again. That first trip took 40 years, but we got to the Promised Land. The way we build our booths reminds us to always be on the lookout for the Redeeming Power, and know that our messianic hopes are not in vain.
Happy holidays!
XRabbi Joel Berman is the rabbi at Ohev Tzedek-Shaarei Torah Congregation in Boardman.