Rav Shira Shazeer – School Rabbi MetroWest Jewish Day School
This past week, on Yom Kippur, as is my custom, I spent the day in prayer. Children grow, in age, in skills, in responsibility, and in patience, and this year, their growth allowed me to spend more time actually in the service than I have in the last twelve or so years. Each of the holidays has its own character and the High Holy Days are something like a marathon. The amount of time spent inside the same room with the same people saying the same prayers is unequaled, though if you spend long enough there some of the people certainly come and go.
The other thing that happens, if you spend all day in prayer, is that the same words of liturgy return several times, offering repeated opportunities for those words to touch our hearts and souls. Some words are the ones that are familiar from tefilah throughout the year, but some are like old friends who we only meet on this one day for an intense extended visit. One piyyut, liturgical poem, that feels like an old friend in this way is ?? ??? ???, ki anu amecha, “We are your people”, which outlines a series of metaphors for our relationship with God.
This piyyut, has a lot to offer, including a catchy upbeat tune. But within that tune it is the words that really get me. In the midst of a season of metaphors that emphasize God as Judge, and King, that emphasize God’s power and human puniness and dependance, this piyyut breaks the mold, laying out the whole range of relationship metaphors. From ruler-subject, and parent-child, to beloved-beloved and finally ??????-???????, the meaning of which is not totally clear. The mahzor I was using translated these words as those who speak to one another. They could also arguably mean those who have spoken for one another. Either way, this relationship, using the same word for each partner indicates a mutual choosing.
Between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, where we find ourselves right now, we transition from the intense experience of God as primarily transcendent, great, beyond comprehension, and the intense experience of God as imminent, present, dwelling with us in our flimsy-walled, leaky roofed huts. This piyyut gives us a glimpse of that transitional moment, allowing us to see God (the infinite) in an array of ways, at once imminent and transcendent.
Many people dread Yom Kippur, with its long hours in synagogue, the deprivation of fasting, and the sense of rehearsing our own deaths, but it was never meant to be a sad and mournful day. Instead it is an opportunity to clear what weighs on us, to repair the relationships that distance us from each other and from the divine, and pave a path back to a closer, simpler, more intimate relationship. In fact as the day reaches the end there is a tangible sense of joy that that begins to grow in both the words and tunes of the liturgy and in the mounting excitement in many synagogues.
Sukkot comes just five days later to fulfil on that joy, with the formality of Rosh Hashanah and yom Kippur past, we are told to gather four kinds of plants, build a simple hut, move into it and rejoice for a week. The Torah gives us a reason for this mitzvah. It is so that we remember that God caused us to dwell in sukkot after our liberation from Egypt. The sukkah brings up the memory of the satisfaction that we can find in simply having shelter, a few green growing things, and the presence of a community and the divine.
This week’s parsha, Ha’azinu, which takes us to almost the very end of the Torah which will be read on Simchat Torah as the week of Sukkot ends, takes the form of a poem. The poetic form is used intentionally, to help us remember after Moses’ death, all that he taught in his life. The beginning of this poem paints a picture of the relationship between God and the Jewish people. It also recalls the time in the desert. In the metaphor of this poem, God finds the people in the empty howling wilderness, wraps them up, watches over them protects them, hovers over them like an eagle spreading its wings over its young. The metaphor is the same; God chooses the people, provides shelter and and chooses to be present with them.
There is a debate among the commentators about what it means that God caused us to dwell in sukkot in the desert. Were they actual huts? Some say they were, while others say no, the verse refers to the protection of God’s cloud of glory, God’s sheltering presence with the people as they traveled.
As we emerge from the transcendent starkness of Yom Kippur, we move quickly into the imminent, present closeness of Sukkot, following God’s example in choosing to come together in the simplicity of temporary flimsy shelters, choosing to make them open, welcoming homes, and choosing to find joy in them, together.