Succot & Simchat Torah

I think we need to consider what joy and simcha, happiness, really means.

And the message of Sukkot is that it means a return to basics, back to basics.

It is ultimately in a difficult and complex world where all of us, both of us here in this room and everyone who's watching, and on a national level, we go through difficult and painful experiences sometimes, sometimes heartbreak, sometimes loss and challenges that are really difficult to carry.

And ultimately the most we humans can do is to focus on that which we have and to appreciate the gifts of life and opportunity it gives.

And Sukkot is that time.

Sukkot is the day in which we move out of our houses and we live in this temporary structure, the Sukkah.

And, you know, in the diaspora, in the cold weather of the UK, we miss a dimension of this because we kind of go out to the sukkah just to have a bite to eat or to have a meal.

In Israel, people move out to the sukkah for seven days.

We sleep in the sukkah.

We do everything in the sukkah.

And we miss that dimension in the way that we keep sukkot here.

But imagine for a moment, and maybe we'll talk about how this can move from a thought experiment to reality.

Imagine we really lived in temporary booths.

And imagine we really internalise what it's like to just have the bare minimum.

I want to speak for a moment maybe about homelessness and the sense of vulnerability, what it is to be on the street with no shelter, with no protection.

I saw a while back there were sort of celebrity movements in which people slept rough on the street just for one night and somehow experienced what it is to go through that vulnerability.

that terrible undermining of self and inner security.

And this is what we're being called upon to do for seven days.

For seven days, we're required to move out.

The verse says, move out of your homes and step out of a permanent structure and notice what it is just to have the gifts of a roof over one's head and to have food and to be able to survive.

And if we can get back to basics, if we can notice that and we can appreciate that, then we're left as such different people, as such different beings.

I think it's also about empathy.

It is about noticing that those around us in our society, often invisible as we step into the supermarket and we almost pass by someone sitting on the ground outside, just to notice what it is to remember and to be reminded that to be a Jew isn't to be a safe, secure person with luxury and leafy suburb, middle-class life.

You know, Sukkot is part of the Exodus story.

In the same way as Pesach is reminding us of leaving Egypt and that we were once slaves, Sukkot is reminding us that we once lived in the desert without our means to be taken for granted.