A Sukkot Reminder

This week we begin the seven day period of Sukkot. The holiday has several obvious symbols that we all recognize- the Sukkah, a temporary hut to recall the days of the desert wandering, the Lulav and Etrog, symbols that tie the holiday to the fall harvest and to the Land of Israel. If you attend services these are symbols that you can’t avoid. There are other symbols of the holiday that are not so obvious. Perhaps the most important is found within the Torah reading. The Rabbis called Sukkot “the holiday.” There was something so special about it that it was “the” holiday unlike any other. I suggest we look for the reason in the Torah reading containing the narrative of a series of sacrifices that were only brought during Sukkot.
The Book of Numbers commands that 70 oxen be sacrificed. Each one of the oxen stood for one of the peoples of the world. (In Rabbinic politics the world consisted of seventy nations.) As a people we were to offer a sacrifice to God for every nation of the world. This has to strike the modern reader as strange: why would we pray for the other nations? Surely, some of them could be our enemies, yet God commands that we sacrifice and pray on their behalf. To the Rabbis this was the seed of Jewish universalism. After spending Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur praying for ourselves and for the Jewish people God reminds us that we need to pray for all human beings.
Today we live in a world filled with tension and hatred. (So did our ancestors.) Our own country is more divided than ever it seems- we need to heal from all of the polarizing elements that plague us today. Can you think of a better time to pray on behalf of those that we might tend to dismiss as “enemies,” as “them,” or as “those people.” It is not an easy thing to do. It tends to challenge human behavior but that is exactly what the Rabbis wanted us to learn from Sukkot- at every turn, even on most sacred of days, we need to look at the rest of humanity and remind ourselves that we are all in this together.
Observe the lessons of Sukkot: visit a Sukkah and remember how very delicate the world is. Hold the lulav and etrog and remember the beauty that exists in this world. Pray for the well-being of others and hope they pray for yours!