Lama Sukkah Zu???

Just a brief fortnight ago we were tossing Cheerios, Wheat Thins and Wonder Bread in to the oceans, creeks and estuaries, watching our sins float away or be consumed by bloated ducks.   Five days ago, Jews around the world twirled chickens and roosters around their head in another symbolic expiating of sins.  (I’m sorry, but wouldn't causing the needless suffering innocent animals be considered sinful?) I checked the Chabad online site and found the following phrase among the guidelines for Kaparot: “One cannot do kaparot with a "used" chicken.”  Another e-commerce idea down the drain.

Just when we thought Judaism couldn’t get any stranger Sukkot arrives. The building supplies come up from the basement or the garage and lie on our decks like a grotesque erector set – metal poles or wood 2 x 4’s; canvas wrapping or plywood panels; bamboo stalks or mats.  Have you tried navigating 30 pound bundles of 10 foot bamboo pole through the kitchen without knocking over the Mr. Coffee machine or displacing the toaster?  Impossible.  Hours are spent assembling.  Instructions, if they ever existed were lost 7 years ago in the last move.  It is the Ikea assembly project from hell. Forget Avraham, Izhak, Yaakov, Yosef, Moshe, Aahron and David – send me Bob Vila. Of course, the minute the sukkah is completed it starts to rain. Down here in Atlanta, Indian summer will be initiated with temperature and humidity that hovers in 3 digits and our Sukkot will become suburban sweat lodges.  Up north, an early winter will set in early with a cold front raging from Canada.  Chicken soup will freeze in bowls; matzo balls will turn into matzo meal icebergs. 

We go to shule the next day and walk around with long palm stalks and $50 lemons.  Seven days later, the sukkah parts are returned to the garage, the palm branches sit in the garbage and the etrog rots on the counter. 

I so love Sukkot. It is irrational, illogical, unreasonable and unproductive.  And thus, it is so important. We spend our days with metrics, outcome goals and billable hours.  We sit in traffic and, while our cars inch forward, we talk on the phone with clients or bosses. We check our email as we head for bed and as we rise in the morning. Even our recreation becomes task-like – we “workout”.  We don’t stroll, we power walk.  We acculturate our children to this driven lifestyle early on: Music lessons follow ballet lessons follow soccer practice field hockey practice and soccer practice.  Our children no longer play - they compete. In the midst of our focus and driven lives, Sukkot reminds us that among the keys to a purposeful life is to find moments to be purposeless. 

And when the Sukkah is complete and the first night’s meal is over, we sit sipping tea – or perhaps something stronger. Faint stars twinkle through the skach.  The canvas walls offer a sense of protection as is we are wrapped in peacefulness.  We are beyond the reach of the TV.  We have ventured past the boundaries of our wireless internet.  Perhaps we dare to turn off our iphones. We stop, we breathe.  We chat with family and friends. If children cannot be with us we recall times when our they were young and we made paper chains or strung Cheerios, cranberries and ziti noodles and draped them over and through the bamboo poles.

Purposefulness will return in the days ahead, but for now we embrace holy goofiness, and divinely inspired irrationality.  Enjoy!!