Sukkot began on a Thursday eight years ago. I know this because it was eight years ago today that Jennifer and I returned home to our apartment on Gregory Way from lunch in a sukkah at a friend’s home to hear the phone ringing. Although we use electricity, we do not use the phone on Shabbat and holidays because we find it to be not in the spirit of the holidays. Newly arrived to Los Angeles where I was studying in rabbinical school, we did not yet own an answering machine so that in case of an emergency (God forbid), we would be able to hear the voice of someone leaving us a message trying to reach us. The phone rang four, five, six times and then stopped. I went to lie down for a nap when the phone started to ring again. This time, a bit annoyed – figuring it was a persistent telemarketer – I rolled over and tried to ignore the ringing. After another five or six rings, the phone stopped again. But a few minutes later, the phone rang again. This time I was worried.
I answered the phone and on the other end of the line was my sister, Elizabeth, a doctor in San Jose where my grandmother lived. "Grandma is in the hospital; she is really sick. You should come." My sister is an internist who deals much more closely on a daily basis in life and death than I so I knew it was serious.
I do not travel on Shabbat or Jewish holidays so, after I hung up the phone, I walked a few short blocks to Rabbi Elliot Dorff’s home to discuss my various options. If I waited until the end of the first 2 days of the festival, and then Shabbat, which followed immediately thereafter, I would likely be too late. We decided that, although we observe the 2nd day of Jewish festivals, since the 2nd day of Sukkot has a different halakhick status (a different status according to Jewish law), when the 1st day of the festival ended that night, I would make a reservation on Southwest airlines and take the last flight that night out of LAX.
When I arrived that night to San Jose, I went immediately to the hospital to visit my grandma Lillian (z"l), who was in a coma. Since I do not travel on Shabbat, the next day (Friday) I made arrangements for me to spend Shabbat in the hospital, in her room at her side, an intimacy that the stringencies of Jewish law gifted to me. Friday night, I prayed Kabbalat Shabbat at her side and made Kiddush with her. The next morning I donned my tallit, prayed the morning prayers and studied the weekly portion to the rhythm of a ventilator and heart monitor. That afternoon, after one of many visits to my grandma’s side, my mother, sister and I, and my great uncle Ed and Molly, walked away from her door towards the waiting room for a few minutes of relief. As we headed past the nurse’s station, a nurse called, "she is fading – you should come quickly." We hustled back to the room. I knelt down, took out my siddur, and began to recite the vidui – the Jewish deathbed confessional – and concluded with the Sh’ma. Before I finished those words, she had died.
I am grateful for many things from that weekend. I am grateful for the guidance and compassion of a wise teacher and friend in Rabbi Dorff. I am grateful for the gift – as a teacher of mine, Rabbi Ed Feinstein would describe it a few weeks later – of holding my grandmother’s hand as she slipped from this world into the next. And, as the years have gone by, I am even grateful that she died during this season, on the 3rd day of Sukkot, for through her death she taught me the true essence of what it means to dwell in a Sukkah. There is even blessing in death, in a funeral.
Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt once wrote:
"I recall a funeral I conducted last year. After we finished the service and placed the dirt on the coffin, while still at the graveside, an elderly woman stepped forward to say a few words. It was most unusual. She did not even ask permission to talk. She just started speaking. She wanted us to know what a blessing it was to have a funeral, a proper burial, with friends and family in attendance. How fortunate this individual was to be laid to rest in accordance with Jewish customs and rituals.
"The remarks were puzzling. But not if you knew that both the person who spoke and the one whom we had just buried were both Holocaust survivors. She explained that so many Jews never had a proper burial, and that their graves are unknown. Their loved ones were not with them to perform the mitzvah of hesed shel emet, the final act of kindness that a proper burial provides. She said how fortunate this person was to live to see his children and his children's children, to know and enjoy the freedom offered by this land, and to have a grave.
I never thought about a grave and a burial as a blessing."
There is even blessing in a funeral. Blessing in death.
Martha Nussbaum, author of a book called, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, once wrote, "part of the peculiar beauty of human excellence just is its vulnerability." Part of what gives this world its beauty, its goodness, is its vulnerability. Commenting on a poem by the Greek poet, Pindar, in which the poet writes, "human excellence grows like a vine tree, fed by the green dew, raised up, among wise men and just, to the liquid sky," Nussbaum says, "The tenderness of a plant is not the dazzling hardness of a gem…Human excellence is seen…as something whose very nature it is to be in need, a growing thing in the world, that could not be made invulnerable and keep its own peculiar fineness."
Cannot be made invulnerable and keep its peculiar fineness. Beauty in this world cannot be made invulnerable. We cannot be invulnerable, though we try. We try so hard to protect ourselves. To protect our children. We build walls. We build strong, comfortable houses with roofs and heat for shelter and quiet. But we cannot be made invulnerable; we cannot keep ourselves safe and truly celebrate the beauty of this world. On Sukkot, the time the tradition tells us is "zman simchateinu" – the season of our joy – we dwell in a fragile hut, open to the winds and rain and cold of the world, to remind ourselves that our joy is enriched, is deepened only when we glimpse, if only for a moment, at how weak and fragile we are.
Our joy is deepened when the shattered glass at a Jewish wedding reminds us, since Jewish history has been filled with sorrow, how much more we should dance for a hatan and kallah – a bride and groom standing before God on their wedding day.
Our joy is deepened through the tears we cry at a bar or bat mitzvah, or at a wedding, or a bris or simchat bat, when we think about grandma or grandpa, or mom or dad, or a brother or sister or a child or grandchild who would have loved so much to be here for this blessed moment.
Our joy is deepened through the words of the psalm we sang in Hallel this morning: vœ¨nUs hË¥s§r«h›kŠF t½O±Ãu V·²h›Uk‰kœ©v±h oh¦,¥N©Óv›tœO "the dead shall not praise you, nor those who go down in silence." There is a song of joy that we can sing in this world when we remember the dead who cannot sing any longer.
Our blessing of gratitude for food and nourishment is deepened only when we have known what it means to be hungry.
Rabbi Israel Mayer HaCohen, the 19th century author of the Mishnah Berurah known as the Chafetz Chaim, a commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, asked why it is that we celebrate Sukkot in autumn. Leviticus 23:42-3 teaches "You shall live in booths seven days, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I am Adonai your God." If Sukkot commemorates what God did after the Exodus from Egypt, let us celebrate Sukkot in the spring! Alternatively, if, Sukkot commemorates the clouds of glory with which God sheltered us in the wilderness (as Rabbi Akiba argued in the Talmud), let us celebrate Sukkot in the summer when the clouds protected us most from the searing mid-day summer sun! Why autumn? The Chafetz Chaim answers that we were not commanded to make sukkot during the spring or summer because that was when most people would make sukkot for shade; instead we make them davka (!) – specifically – when the rainy season begins and the weather grows colder during the fall to remind others and ourselves that we what we are doing is a mitzvah – a commandment from God. This mitzvah asks us to see and feel the world in all our weakness and vulnerability. The sukkah invites us to make our home amidst the elements, to experience the chill of autumn, to get damp and wet and cold, and only then, to feel the true joy of having lived another year in God’s beautiful world.
Last night it rained. Like many of you, I too was disappointed not to have a clear warm 1st night in our sukkah. That’s why I moved to Los Angeles! J And I admit…we ate dinner inside. We made Kiddush in the sukkah, even brought out a couple of dry chairs, said the blessing for sitting in the sukkah, and dutifully sat down two-by-two to fulfill the mitzvah of sitting in the sukkah. The term in Jewish law for why were allowed to move inside is: "istinisim anachnu" – we are weak, fragile souls not meant for such weather. Put another way, we are Angelenos! J But as I sat at our dining room table inside and gazed outdoors at our sukkah in the rain, a part of me yearned for our sukkah and wondered if it wasn’t a mistake, if we hadn’t missed the point – to sit in the sukkah in the rain.
My blessing for each of us for this holy season and beyond is that we may learn to see the blessings in a funeral. That we may embrace the tears of memory that well up behind our eyes at a simcha. That we may stop and rejoice in the vine that will one day fade. And that, if perchance, it will rain again this Sukkot, we will venture outdoors and rejoice in the opportunity to eat in our sukkah, in the rain, in Los Angeles.
Rabbi Daniel Greyber is the Executive Director of Camp Ramah in California and the Zimmer Conference Center of the University of Judaism. He lives in Los Angeles, CA with his wife Jennifer, his sons, Alon and Benjamin, and another one on the way.