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I read the other day something that I liked: “Everything in life is temporary. If things go well, enjoy it because it won’t last forever. And if things do not go well, don’t worry. It can’t last forever.”
A central theme of the holiday of Sukkot is the temporality. We build a Sukkah, i.e. a temporary construction and we live there for the week of the holiday. It is temporary, this is why the schach, the roof, is made of leaves and cannot protect us from the rain. On the other hand, we should consider this temporality as permanent. In fact, it lasts only 8 days (7 in Israel) but we should try to live in the Sukkah as in our (“permanent”) home. We eat, study, play, sing, (some even sleep) inside the Sukkah. In other words, we have at the same time temporality and permanency.
This message of Sukkot applies to the whole year. We are in a temporary world, where everything changes constantly. Our environment changes and we change as well. Sometimes the changes are good, sometimes they are better… The only truly permanent thing is G-d and what He asks from us. Our role is to bring this permanency – G-d – in our temporary environment.
Sukkot reminds us to thing again about the way we approach our lives. What are the temporary things in our life, and what are the permanent ones? Does the way we utilize our possessions, our time, our money and our energy correspond to our priorities?
Let us deal with the permanent things in our life as they deserve, and with the temporary things not more than necessary. Let us bring the permanent G-d inside the limits of our temporary world.
Chag Sameach!
Hanna
