By Marco Del Monte
Looking at the Sky
There are nights when we should remember to lift our eyes.
We live almost always beneath solid ceilings. We build walls, close doors, plan for tomorrow. We need to feel protected. And yet, once a year, just when we have finished the solemn days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Torah asks us for a surprising gesture: leave your house and enter a hut. A fragile, temporary dwelling, covered in branches.
And above those branches, the sky…
Perhaps this is one of the most beautiful messages of Sukkot: to remind ourselves of what truly sustains us, sometimes we must step outside of what we believe sustains us.
The Torah commands: «You shall dwell in sukkot for seven days». And the Talmud discusses what those sukkot in the desert were: according to Rabbi Akiva they were real huts; according to Rabbi Eliezer they were the Ananei haKavod, the Clouds of Glory, a manifestation of divine protection. Perhaps the two images, read together, tell us something extraordinary. Outside, a hut. Above, the Clouds of Glory. The structure may be fragile, but what envelops us is not. Sukkot does not promise us a life without wind. It does not tell us that nothing will change, that no plan will be overturned, that what we possess today will be ours forever. It teaches us something deeper: even when the walls shake, we are not abandoned. And perhaps this is why Sukkot is specifically called Zeman Simchatenu, the time of our joy. Not because everything is stable, but because we have discovered that joy does not depend on the stability of everything that surrounds us. And in the sukkah we are not alone. The Talmud utters a wonderful phrase: «כל ישראל ראויים לישב בסוכה אחת» — all Israel is worthy of sitting in a single sukkah (Sukkah 27b). It is a tremendously powerful image of community.
Under the same sechach roof enter different people, different stories, different generations. No one has to cease being themselves. Simply, for a few days we learn that we can look at the same sky. Perhaps we need precisely this. To sit a little closer together. To speak a little less and listen to each other a little more. And, every now and then, to raise our eyes together. Because through the branches of the sukkah we see the stars and we understand that not everything that is fragile is weak, and not everything that is solid is eternal. Our homes will pass away. Our certainties will change. Even the sukkah, in a few days, will be taken down. But the sky will remain. And as long as we know how to raise our eyes, draw close to one another and remember Who is above us, we will always have a Home.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sukkot Sameach.