Considering the paradoxes of Sukkot

I love the paradoxes of Sukkot: a holiday with profound universalistic theological overtones that became politically important for particularists; a holiday that uses the metaphor of the sukkah both to imagine the canopy under which we all live in harmony, as well as the instrument for all of us to organize our families separately and privately; a celebration of both the permanence of living under divine protection and the impermanence of our temporary dwellings; the liminal moments between desperation that it not rain and the prayer that it does; the joy and present-ism of being in the sukkah with our loved ones, along with the nostalgia and longing for our imagined guests; even the diasporic silliness of marking a warm-weather agricultural festival in much colder climates. It is a holiday of unbelievable theological sophistication, wedded to both some technology and some crafting.

Yehuda Kurtzer, Facebook post (13 October 2019) [https://www.facebook.com/yehuda.kurtzer/posts/10157943012472174]