Sukkot is called z'man simchateinu (the season of our joy), the one festival the Torah explicitly commands us to celebrate with happiness. Yet look closely at the haftarot we read on its first two days, and the picture is anything but simple celebration.
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On the first day, we read from Zechariah 14, a vision of apocalyptic war, nations massed against Jerusalem, cosmic upheaval before peace finally arrives. On the second day, we read from I Kings 8, Solomon dedicating the Temple, the culmination of generations of struggle, wandering, and yearning for a home. One reading is battle. The other is the hard-won fruit of that battle: a dwelling place, finally secure.
Strangely this isn't a contradiction. It's the message.
We cannot fully inhabit joy we haven't received through struggle. A Sukkah, by design, is a fragile structure, open to the sky, vulnerable to wind and rain, and we're commanded to feel joy inside it precisely because we know what fragility feels like. Solomon's Temple means something because it followed centuries of slavery, wilderness, and war. The joy of Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day) possesses greater meaning because it comes one day after the grief of Yom HaZikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day). Jewish tradition doesn't ask us to seek out suffering, but it refuses to let us pretend that comfort, alone, produces meaning. Complacency doesn't generate joy. Living through something and coming out the other side ironically does.
And this is where I think about what we do here at the Jewish Federation. We exist, in part, to walk alongside people through their hardest moments, financial hardship, isolation, crisis, loss. That's real and necessary work. But we also exist to gather the community in joy: holidays, milestones, celebrations of what we've built together. Sukkot reminds us that these aren't two separate missions. They're one mission, in sequence, just like Zechariah's war gives way to Solomon's Temple.
Sukkot's message often gets lost, arriving as it does right after the introspective, even somber weight of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. By the time we reach the sukkah, we're tired of reflecting on mortality and ready to move on. But that's exactly the wrong moment to disengage. This year let's not miss it. Reach out to someone, check in, invite them to your sukkah, whether that be the temporary holiday structure or your physical home, ask how they're really doing. That act, small as it is, is Sukkot joy. And its Federation's founding purpose, lived out one relationship at a time. Because we are Stronger Together.
Shabbat Shalom and chag sameach!
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