Starting tomorrow evening, Jews around the world will celebrate Sukkot, a week-long holiday that concludes with Simchat Torah. We'll be marking both in our own Humanistic Jewish way.
Our annual Sukkot Potluck Shabbat dinner will be this Friday, Oct. 18, at 6pm. We're going to pull the Sukkah up close to the Family Room door so we can eat inside and still have access. This year it's also a Spinoza program!
Sukkot, with its harvest symbols and focus on food and fun, is much easier for Humanistic Jews to engage with than Simchat Torah. This is because of how a traditional Simchat Torah centers on dancing with and reading from the Torah, which isn't quite our style. So instead of that, we’ll honor its spirit at our Oct. 25 Shabbat service. I'll give a short talk, A Look at the Jewish Bookshelf, covering some key and quirky selections from Jewish literature.
Personally, while I love a beautiful sukkah, if not the memories of freezing to death in them, my favorite Sukkot tradition is the Lulav and Etrog (pictured). The Lulav includes three parts, a date palm, sprigs of myrtle, and willow branches. The lemony looking Etrog, a citron, is the most expensive citrus fruit in the world and you can’t even eat it! To me, however, it’s simply beautiful, and it smells great, too.
In my Rosh Hashanah message, I spoke about inclusivity as one of the most important shared Jewish values. The Four Species are a perfect symbol for this—four distinct elements, bound together, representing the diversity of the Jewish People.
Since many of you have already heard my thoughts on unity through inclusivity, I’ll leave you with words from Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, who frequently talked about the same idea. It's perfect for Sukkot:
Difficult as it is to get along with people, it is impossible to get along without them. By the same token, difficult as it may be for some Jews to get along with their fellow Jews, they cannot dispense with them or ignore them, except to their own hurt. All human beings feel the need to belong to some group that accepts them as a matter of course, that assumes a degree of responsibility for their welfare, and that in return makes demand on their loyalty and devotion. Such belonging gives a new dimension to human life by linking the brief life of the individual with the more permanent and influential life of his group.
…An organic community is one in which the unity of the individual members has the quality of kinship that normally exists among the members of a family. In the ideal family, individual differences are recognized as legitimate and each member does his best to help every other achieve his personal aims, while all try to insure that the family shall continue as a cooperating unit.
…Diversity need not lead to disunity. On the contrary, it is precisely the denial of the right to differ that leads to alienation, secession and schism. We cannot achieve Jewish unity by excommunicating whole sections of Jewry or, what amounts to the same thing, by refusing to associate with other Jewish groups than our own, on the grounds that ours is the sh'erit Yisrael, the "surviving remnant" and sole legitimate representative of the true Jewish People.
One of the best lines in our humanistic interpretation of Kaddish says, "Let us embrace the entire world, even as we struggle with its parts." It's a good thing to do when it comes to our own people, too.
This Sukkot and Simchat Torah (which coincides with the Hebrew anniversary of the October 7 Massacre), our Jewish world faces unprecedented Jew-hatred while being deeply divided over Israel. If ever there was a time to find ways to support each other despite our differences, it’s now. Humanistic Judaism, with its commitment to respectful discourse, can help lead the way.
Looking forward to leaving the heaviness behind this Friday at our potluck! Hope to see you there!
Chag sameach ... Happy Sukkot!