Leap of faith: The sanctuary of Sukkot

I am part of a Rosh Chodesh group of women who have been meeting every month for more than 25 years. I first joined them when I was pregnant, expecting my second child, some 23 years ago. Over that time, we’ve watched and witnessed each other’s children growing up, celebrated milestones and simchas and supported each other through tougher times.

What makes us unusual – other than that it’s been the same group of women for more than two decades, give or take the few who have joined or moved away – is that we come from very different parts of the Jewish world. We hold such difference, yet we love to be together and mark each new month with learning and conversation.

Our all-time favourite date of the year is when we meet for Sukkot, in the same succah, and every year we note the changes in our lives and what we bring there. This sukkah has become a little sanctuary for all of us – a mikdash me’at. And we lean right into the commandment to be joyful through this festival – z’man simchateinu. Because gathering in this physical way is just an antidote to the spiritual high of Yom Kippur – an alternative reality.

It is not always easy to be commanded to feel happy, but with this group we always manage to laugh in the succah no matter what is happening in our lives or in the world.

The sukkah represents, in its very nature, a flimsy, impermanent structure, a symbol of sanctuary and safety, however ephemeral. Most of all it serves as a reminder for those of us living safely in houses that there is another kind of existence.

We pray every evening, in the Hashiveinu prayer after the Shema, for a sukkat shalom – a sukkah of peace that might shield us from sickness, war, famine and distress and even wrongdoing. Yet we know a succah is unlikely to shield us from those things, let alone the elements. A true sukkah can and should let the rain come in.

So why is this temporary home into which we invite friends and family – a place that we feel viscerally all the physicality of being outside and the reminder of such impermanence – so important to us as Jews?

The sukkah, meaning a hut or a booth, was also discussed in the Talmud as a possible metaphor for God’s glory. The metaphors it offers are powerful. For me the metaphor of welcome now leads our celebration of Succot.

In 2015 my community, Finchley Progressive Synagogue, created a sukkah of sanctuary, in which the leader of Barnet Council was inspired and persuaded by the idea of sanctuary to settle Syrian refugees here under the Vulnerable Person Relocation Scheme. Many of our members and close allies in the wider Finchley faith community worked hard to ensure this could happen. And now those families are friends of the synagogue and might come into our succah as guests. Indeed their familiarity with Judaism and our synagogue has helped many.

It was this deeply Jewish act to extend our understanding of Sukkot to those who truly needed a home that, for me, is the true meaning of the festival. It’s incumbent on every generation to renew and add to our traditions. Sukkot invites us to welcome both those from the past and those present friends for whom it may be a first experience. That can only help add joy.