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92nd Street YSpiritual Thought for the Week: October 14
Rabbi Simcha Bunam of Pshis’cha taught,
“The duty of sitting in the Sukkah is a considerable one.
After all, one must enter it in one’s entirety:
one’s whole body
all of one’s limbs
one’s clothes
even one’s shoes…”
Points to Ponder:
- I think Reb Simcha is teaching that the mitzvah of sitting in the Sukkah can never be done perfunctorily. You have to sit in the Sukkah with full mind and intention, from head to toes, “even one’s shoes!” How difficult is this for us when Sukkkot are not in all of our yards, when the demands of our lives (especially mid-week!) make it hard to get to a Sukkah at all?
- I teach our young people that the hardest spiritual lesson to master is “to be here, now.” The Sukkah invites us to do precisely that. It is a world within a world. But must happen within us to enter it in the first place?
- Will you make time to be in a Sukkah this coming week? Might you find the time to really inhabit the “hut in the wilderness,” even for a short while?
- The reason the Sukkah is temporary is to remind us that we really are meant to live in the world. But without the Sukkah (or more regularly, Shabbat), we risk losing ourselves in what Kohelet (whose book we read on this holiday, better known as Ecclesiastes) calls “the chasing after wind…” How do we stop from chasing what we know is of passing value?
Feel free to contact me with your thoughts at rabbigibson@templesinaipgh.org. Chag Sameach – A wonderful Sukkot to all! jag
