Seidemann: Content and confident in the Sukkah

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From the other side of the bench

By David Seidemann

Issue of Oct. 2, 2009 / 14 Tishrei 5770

Rosh Hashana, I’m too scared to eat. Yom Kippur, I’m not allowed to eat. Sukkos, I can eat what I want but not where I want. Passover, I can eat where I want but not what I want. And on Shavuos, I’m just too tired to eat. Thank G-d for Shabbos when I can eat where I want and what I want. Or so I thought, till I was told to cut down on my favorite fatty foods.

At any rate, food habits aside, I really can relate at first glance to all of our wonderful Holidays. They all commemorate a specific historical event celebrated at the unique and precise time of year that the event actually occurred.

Sukkot, however, is the exception. Whether you follow the opinion that the sukkah represents the actual huts in which the Children of Israel lived, or whether they represent the clouds of glory that were provided by G-d to accompany the Children of Israel in the desert, the protection was there all the time. Why then do we “booth it” specifically at this time of year, right after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?

I tried to explain to a non-Jewish neighbor that the sukkah represents “G-d keeping us safe.” He looked at me quizzically and said, “Wouldn’t you guys be safer inside your homes?” “Yes,” I said, “but then we’d think it’s the home that’s protecting us. Do you know what protection is? Protection is being cared for where you are most vulnerable.”

So we go outside into a temporary structure after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when our very existence is called into question: when we are most vulnerable. And when we are most vulnerable we remind G-d of his promise to take care of us.

The seven-day observance of the festival also seems redundant, or arbitrary, until you realize that protection is a seven-day-a-week promise. The observed Sunday of Sukkos protects us for every Sunday in the coming year. The Monday of Sukkos we observe protects us for every Monday. Tuesday for Tuesday, and so on.

And who exactly is being offered protection? Well, if we all were perfect there would be no need for a Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. They exist with all of their “completeness” because we exist incomplete. When we band together, a lulav, an esrog, the complete individual; the man who has it all, when he realizes that without the other three components, he too is incomplete, then he is offered protection.

The essence of protection is when we are most vulnerable, trusting someone or some power other than ourselves. For we all know the root of waywardness is when we believe we can trust in ourselves, that we have no imperfections, no vulnerabilities. A child whose power is limitless, who has no boundaries and no control is not free. He is terrified. Terrified because if he himself can be so powerful and act without restraint, then so can his neighbor. And then it’s all over, as one will devour his neighbor.

What is asked from us in return? Simchat Torah. The joy of our heritage. Adherence and allegiance to a way of life that can at times appear nonsensical and counterintuitive. A lifestyle of trust in something beyond ourselves that, once again, leaves us, you guessed it, vulnerable. Vulnerability, insecurity, is the greatest gift in the world when there is a loving parent picking up the pieces. In addition to the Supreme Power, each generation was and is blessed with leaders who pick up the pieces, lead us through times of uncertainty, give us direction in moments of doubt, confusion and vulnerability.

One such leader was Rav Shlomo Kluger (1783-1869), rav and dayan in Brody for more than fifty years. He was one of the most prolific writers in all of Jewish history, publishing over 160 volumes on Torah and Talmud. He was revered and on hundred of occasions was asked to serve as sandek, or the person who holds the newborn at a circumcision ceremony. It is well accepted that holding the child, besides being a great honor, bestows upon the child traits of the person holding him.

And so Rav Shlomo Kluger arrived to be a sandek one morning only to find that the bris was being delayed. He waited and waited some more. Rav Shlomo inquired and was told that although he was in the room with the newborn and the mohel, the newborn’s father lay on his deathbed in another room a few feet away.

The family was waiting for the father to pass away so that the newborn son could be named after his father. The morning hours were quickly passing and Rav Kluger insisted that the bris take place then and there without further delay. Vulnerable as the family was, they accepted Rav Kluger’s ruling and circumcised the newborn while his father lay near death nearby.

After the bris, Rav Shlomo Kluger went into the father’s room, wished him a mazal tov and blessed him that in the merit of acting with alacrity in a most vulnerable moment, he should experience a complete recovery.

Three days later the man was back on his feet, back in the synagogue, back at his job. Father and son enjoyed a long, productive and wonderful life together.

Show me a man with no vulnerabilities and I’ll show you a man headed for self-destruction. Show me a man with a cane or, better yet, friends or, better still, a value system to support him in times of crisis, and I’ll show you a man content and confident as he sits in his Sukkah.

David Seidemann is a partner with the law firm of Seidemann & Mermelstein. He can be reached at (718) 692-1013 and at ds@lawofficesm.com.