Emily Post, the guru of entertaining and etiquette, wrote “The joy of joys is the person of light but unmalicious humor. You will, if you are wise, do everything you can to make him prefer your house and your table to any other; for where he is, the successful party is also.”  Successful entertaining isn’t easy.  There’s so much to consider: how the house will look, how the personalities of the guests will blend, what foods will be served (with which allergies avoided), the logistics of cleanup, and the list goes on. 

Especially with all of the holidays in our tradition, it comes as no surprise that welcoming guests,Hachnasat Orchim, is a Jewish value, and its roots go back all the way to Avraham and Sarah welcoming the messengers to their tent.  We welcome guests to our home as a sign of openness and blessing.  The Talmud even teaches in Brachot that the guests have an obligation to bless their hosts.  The festival of Sukkot, which is now upon us, is a holiday of welcoming guests to join us in our open and temporary dwellings, though the logistics are a bit out of the ordinary. 

Like other holidays, we have blessings for the wine, the challah, and lighting the candles.  But we are also commanded during this time to sit – leyshev – in the sukkah, the temporary hut, outdoors, away from the comfortable couch in whatever weather we might have at the time.  Sukkot is also unique in that before we recite Kiddush, we insert a special prayer that invites heavenly guests to join us on this day.  These guests are called the Ushpizin.

The Ushpizin come from the central text of Jewish Mysticism known as the Zohar, and asks us to consider inviting, along with our living guests, seven “heavenly” guests: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David.  Modern traditions also include inviting the women, or Ushpizot: Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah and Ruth.  These guests are primarily meant to remind us of our history and the great deeds that each of these ancestors took upon themselves, but they remind us of so much more.  They recall our covenant with God and implore us not only to link one generation to the next, but to help us see the truth of who we are as human beings and remember the model set before us for righteousness and leadership. 

Sukkot certainly has more themes than I’ve mentioned here, but the one that really speaks to me this year is the sense of community at its core.  We are commanded to not only sit in our temporary huts, but to share our culture, traditions and practice with others.  Inviting guests to our home offers us an opportunity to not only fulfill a Mitzvah, but to share culture and learn about one another.  In a similar way, building a community is about sitting together and learning from one another.  Sukkot gives us a moment in time when our brick and mortar boundaries are gone, and our minds and hearts are open to learn and to share. 

ללמוד  To Learn: ללמד  To Teach: Each night of Sukkot have a discussion with your family, whether inside the Sukkah or just outside in your yard, about the theme related to the Ushpizin of the evening.   (Steinberg, Paul.  Celebrating the Jewish Year: The Fall Holidays.  2007)

First

Abraham

Sarah

Parents of Faith

Second

Isaac

Rebecca

Transmitters of Legacy and Foundation

Third

Jacob

Leah

Progenitors of Israel

Fourth

Joseph

Rachel

Nurturers of the Past and Caretakers of the Future

Fifth

Moses

Miriam

Leaders of Freedom

Sixth

Aaron

Deborah

Harbingers of Peace

Seventh (Hoshanah Rabah)

David

Ruth

Living Legacies of Israel for the Past, Present & Future

For next year, remember to contact Rabbi Posen to find out how to build a sukkah yourselves!

לשמור  To Keep:  לעשות  To Do: Invite friends to share in a meal with you.  Sukkot reminds us how temporary housing is for some.  Volunteer as a family in a soup kitchen. 

It’s the cliche you’ve heard a hundred times.  “There’s no ‘I’ in team.”  Maybe you’ve even heard the typical, sarcastic pre-teen comeback, “But there is “me.”  It’s the coach beckoning out to the player who isn’t sharing the ball with his teammates.  It’s the orchestra or band conductor when one musician doesn’t match their pitch with the others. It’s the teacher in a classroom when one student constantly calls out the answers before anyone else has a chance. Or it’s in a professional setting when one co-worker is constantly promoting themselves at the expense of another.  One of the hardest and most essential lessons to learn when interacting in society is how to share, how to be a part of the community.  We try to teach our children as young as we can that they are a part of the family, they are a part of the community, and that we have a responsibility to others to do our part to help.  But sometimes, when this lesson is taken to heart, we find ourselves so entrenched in the problems and workings of the community that we lose ourselves as individuals.  The ideal is a balance between personal responsibility and communal responsibility, and real peace is a world of give and take. 

Clearly, we don’t live in this utopia; in fact, we live in a world where finding the balance can be exceedingly difficult.  This problem of finding balance is most notably obvious when looking at the liturgy we’re about to spend 25 hours engaging with for Yom Kippur, when we’re spending time in the pews instead of glued to college football (*insert favored team cheer here).  It is on this special day that we are asked to look deep inside ourselves, to ask for forgiveness for the wrongs that we as individuals have done during the course of the year.  We are supposed to spend the day in personal thought and prayer, hoping to individually be inscribed in the book of life.  Yet each time we arrive at a moment of confession for our transgressions, it is written in the plural.  “We abuse, we betray, we are cruel…” are the words we recite.  We stress personal responsibility, but our liturgy informs us that for better or for worse, we are responsible in some way for the actions of all human kind.  While I might not be the literal transgressor, I live in a world where these transgressions continue to occur. 

“But Rabbi,” you might say, “I can’t take care of everyone!  That’s crazy!”  It’s about balance.  We strive towards a work/life balance, a food balance, a TV balance, and even here, a balance in our communal responsibilities.  Hillel, the great rabbinic scholar, taught:  If I am not for myself, who will be for me; If I am only for myself, what am I, and if not now, when?  This teaching reminds us that we have multiple obligations. 

●        If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

We must understand that we have a responsibility to take note of ourselves and to set boundaries that allow each of us to live a healthy and balanced lifestyle.  This phrase reminds us that we are each individually required to live a life that fulfills our own souls, and at this time of the year, we must take for ourselves precious moments for prayer that fulfills our needs.  We must be true to ourselves, and on this and every day, we must search deep inside ourselves for the truth in our prayers, thoughts and deeds.  We must understand what it is that we do or haven’t done because of our own reasons. 

●        If I am only for myself, what am I?

But, Hillel teaches, if we are only for ourselves, then we’ve done nothing.  If we only confess for the transgressions that we have done individually, then we have missed the boat on what it means to live.  “What am I,” we must ask ourselves, “when I don’t take a stand in the community, when I play for the ‘me’ instead of the team?”  As part of Am Yisrael, the Jewish people, we have a responsibility towards one another and the greater world to act for justice and righteousness.

●        If not now, when?

Finally, Hillel teaches us that the time is now.  Instead of waiting for the right time to take on that next project, start today.  We arrive at this season of repentance and renewal anxious to move forward and begin a new year.  As we make this fresh start, free from transgressions, we are to think about the now, about our commitment to the community.  The blessing is in the plural because we are all a part of the team.

ללמוד  To Learn: ללמד  To Teach: The Ashamnu is the communal confessional prayer of Yom Kippur.  Find it in your Machzor and as a family read through each of the “sins” or “missed marks” and discuss how you might work together as a team to stay on target this coming year.

לשמור  To Keep:  לעשות  To Do:  Yom Kippur is a day of atonement, asking for forgiveness, which can be very abstract to children.  Sit with your child and ask them what they’re asking for forgiveness for this year.  Perhaps even help them write a letter to the person they’ve hurt.