Chapter 16 of
the Book of Deuteronomy instructs regarding the Feast of Booths:
"14 You shall rejoice in your festival, with your son and
daughter, your male and female slave, the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless,
and the widow in your communities. 15 You shall hold a festival for
Adonai your God seven days, in the place that Adonai will choose; for Adonai
your God will bless all your crops and all your undertakings, and you shall
have nothing but joy."
We know this "Feast of Booths," chag ha-sukkot, as the
holiday of Sukkot. It is a time for us to feel a sense of fulfillment.
For our Biblical ancestors, this sense of fulfillment may have come from
completing the harvest season with abundant crops. For us, it may mean we
have successfully passed through another series of Yamim Noraim, the Days of
Awe.
This passage is designated as the Torah reading for the eighth
day observance called Shemini Atzeret, which follows Sukkot. A careful
reading reveals two uses of the word "joy" in quick succession, in
verses 14 and 15. We can see it even more clearly in the Hebrew: the
passage begins and ends with a form of simcha. In fact, another name for
Sukkot is zeman simchatenu, the season of our rejoicing.
"You shall rejoice in your festival..."; "you
shall have nothing but joy." The Torah is not often in the habit of
commanding us to feel specific emotions. We might think of the
commandment to "love the stranger as yourself" (Deut. 10:19, among
other citations), but this Biblical injunction means we bear responsibilities
towards the stranger, we have a duty to act. Similarly, the command of
the Shema to "love Adonai your God" (Deut. 6:5) means we must show
undivided loyalty to Adonai and translate that loyalty into action, observing
the laws and rules set down for us. These are not examples of the emotive
love we have for our families and partners.
What did some of our traditional commentators have to say about
the instruction to rejoice? Rashi wondered if the phrase "you shall
have nothing but joy" was to be read as a command, or if this was a
promise of joy to come in the future. Ibn Ezra interpreted these words as
a statement that there should be no other emotion during the Sukkot holiday
except rejoicing. "You shall have nothing but joy"- ach sameach
- there is no room for anything else, noo ‘mixed feelings.'
There is a Talmudic dictum that "one rejoicing may not be
merged in another" (B. T. Moed Katan 8b). This is why Jewish
tradition would object to celebrating a wedding during a festival such as
Sukkot. But is that the intent of this command, that we experience only
one joy at a time, that we not commingle our joys?
When we speak of having ‘mixed feelings,' we're usually not
talking about two joyous feelings. Rather, we can experience seemingly
contradictory emotions simultaneously. A parent can be proud and happy
that his son is headed off to college, even while feeling sadness that he is
leaving home. A devoted daughter mourns the loss of her mother, though
she feels some relief that death has ended her physical suffering. One
explanation for the tradition of breaking a glass at a wedding is that we
should be reminded of the tragedy of the destruction of the Temple at our most
joyous moments.
We may believe that having such mixed emotions is part of our
modern sensibility. But surely we are not the only generation in the
course of Jewish history to experience such ambiguity in our lives, and perhaps
that is why we find this text within our Torah: our ancestors must have
struggled with mixed feelings sometimes, as well. If the Sukkot festival
was to be a time of all-encompassing joy, commanding that people feel a certain
way could prove difficult. Commanding specific behavior leaves open
more possibilities for satisfying the requirement.
So what action should follow in the wake of the command to
rejoice? For guidance, we can look to another commandment which is
specific to Sukkot: to dwell in a sukkah (Lev. 23:42). By definition, a sukkah
is an impermanent structure. We leave our homes with their fixed roofs
and come to take our meals, to sit, to welcome guests, in a fragile booth.
Perhaps we study while we are in the sukkah. We may read from the
Book of Ecclesiastes (Kohelet), which informs us that material possessions are
lovely but not lasting.
We can also take time in the sukkah to reflect on the blessings
in our lives. Our tangible goods may be ephemeral, but our moral and
spiritual ‘goods' are not. If we can put aside, even for a short time,
any mixed feelings we might have, we can come to a sense of inner security.
The very fragility of the booth allows us to see through to what is
enduring in our lives.
In the Torah reading for this Shabbat during Sukkot, Moses
seeks comfort from God, in the aftermath of the Israelites' sin of forging a
golden calf. We seek comfort, too, in our prayers, asking that we
be sheltered in the sukkah of God's peace. May it be so.
By Janet Roberts
Rabbinical Student HUC-JIR
This d’var Torah was written for the Israel Religious Action Center website