Sukkoth 2011

Sukkoth and V'Zot Haberachah

What are the faces of God? What are our faces? Do we really know them? What is a harvest? Do we really know it? Or is a harvest (like a face) much more than it seems? Can they help us to understand and see God in each other? I believe they can.

The Sfat Emet says (of Succoth): It is the time of in-gathering, when everyone harvests and gathers his property into his home. This is a good time to remember that we and all we possess belong to God. He too gathers us into his home, the sukkah. The Sfas Emet also says (of Yom Kippur)…this inwardness reveals itself as a result of great effort, a struggle of the souls and body, to purify the physical.

So.. we see-in on Yom Kippur to our many faces. We gather-in on Sukkoth. As we move through Yom Kippur, we take part in that purification so on Sukkoth we are ready to be whole….to bring all to God. The faces of our reality, the way we communicate (whether by email, cell phone, face-to-face) the many masks we wear…they are all gathered-in as well. They all mold themselves these seven days into the one face of pure love. In short, the holiday of Sukkoth is not only literal but a metaphoric harvest in which we glean the light from the face-of-God closest to our soul and offer it right back up. And just as important, we offer it to each other.

This is a cycle, a way to keep the breath of blessing and life moving and pulsing. It is what Moses does right before dying. He blesses the tribes of Israel. He transmits the God-love to God-in- people.

Sukkoth therefore is a beyond-human holiday, one in which we can keep the essence of our purification (from Yom Kippur) just a bit longer to communicate with each other in a way that is so beautiful it feels…well…beyond-human. Beyond all pretense and fear, beyond all jealousy and anger, beyond the shadows, beyond doubt.

The Zohar says… When souls ascend to the site of…light, there they bask in the radiance of the resplendent speculum, shining from the highest site of all. If the soul did not garb herself in the radiance of another garment, then she could not draw near to view that light. The mystery of the matter: Just as the soul is given a garment in which to be garbed, so too is she given a garment of supernal radiance to exist in this world.

How do we show this supernal radiance? We look at where we live. We try to dwell in a temporary place so we can really feel the temporary nature of our physical body, our body-dwelling (Sfas Emet). If we can do this, then we can feel the eternity of the harvesting of our soul, of the clean and direct and purified face-of-love that we can offer-up. Soon, we are seeing and being seen.

We look at how we behave. The point is to see God in each person next to you, to hold that vision, that thought. How sad to slide through Sukkoth without acting on the miraculous possibilities of healing here, of touch and recognition, of pain and remembrance, of renewal and re-creation.

We look at how we speak and listen.

In the Sefer Haredim we read…When you speak with your fellow man, let your intention be to speak with your creator.

In Isaiah we read…a voice in the desert cries out: Clear the way of God. In other words, whatever you might hear, it is a sign for you to fix something here, that you were meant to hear this now this moment. It is not in vein that God sent these words to you.

How to bring this to today? Rumi says this: Mix an eye-medicine with the ground. Sweep the memory pictures clean. Swing down and cut. A voice comes in the broken place. Pull the tree wing up by its roots. Love wants an arm and a leg. I say this: See the sun. Bring in the God-face you may have lost or placed aside. Bring it into the Sukkah. Meet yourself again. Meet your lover again. Merge in the one-ness of the in-gathering. Glean your cleanest divine sparks. Offer up the merge to God and seal the prayer, seal the sacrifice, come face-to-face in love with man-in-God and God-in man. Know (in joy) who you are.