The Canopy of Grief: Sukkot and Oct 7th

Two years.

Tomorrow is the 7th of October — and the first day of Sukkot.

Two years since everything came crashing down.

Two years since the assumptions of both left and right shattered.

On the left — that the ordinary Gazan is a partner for peace.

On the right — that Bibi’s government would bring us ultimate security.

Sukkot teaches us that even our most cherished beliefs, our most comfortable assumptions, are contingent. That happiness — simcha — is found not in stability but in the journey: the willingness to step into the wilderness, to dwell in a fragile hut, yet be embraced by the warmth of tradition, family, laughter, and faith. That, ladies and gentlemen, is joy. Nothing more. Nothing less.

On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we confront the truth of our impermanence — our mortality and our fragmented nature. For some, that encounter can lead to cynicism, to despair, to the hevel of Kohelet — “vanity,” “nothingness” — echoed centuries later by philosopher Martin Heidegger. But in Jewish tradition, nothingness is not an option. Meaning is the antidote to nothingness, and meaning is found in the festival that follows those Days of Awe.

On Sukkot we return to nature. We hold the four species in our hands and proclaim our faith — in God and in our people. We leave behind the comfort of permanence and material acquisition and enter a dimension of existence that opens us to a higher calling. We lift our eyes from the illusion of self-sufficiency to the protection of the heavenly clouds. We surrender to impermanence — and yet are asked to find joy even still.

Even still — to find joy?

Even after all the suffering, all the pain, all the trauma?

After the images of Be’eri and Nova, after the massacre and torture of our people two years ago to the day?

After the slaughter of children and babies in our so-called “progressive” world of 2025?

After our disillusionment with that same progressive world that is open to every expression of humanity except Jews?

After thousands of soldiers have fallen, families shattered, lives irreparably changed?

Even after the very foundations of our ideology have crumbled?

Even after all this — can we still sit in our sukkah, beneath nothing but clouds for protection?Even after all this — can we still live in a land that “consumes its inhabitants”?

Can we still send our children to the army and ask our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora to join us in this old-new land?

Even after all this — can we still be a people that says yes?

Yes to joy.Yes to life.Yes to God.Yes to faith.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about grief — about rituals of loss and how ritual helps us process pain. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur bring us to a place of grief — grief for the selves we are leaving behind, for the years of lost opportunities, for the illusions that no longer exist, for the people we have lost. And this year — we grieve for all that, and more.

We need grief to make sense of a world turned upside down. We need grief to lean into our vulnerability, to crack us open to the deeper truth and potential of our lives. We must pass through the corridor of grief to rediscover joy. And when we have journeyed through that liminal space — that wilderness — and used our rituals for catharsis, perhaps then, with trembling and awe, we can affirm that despite everything, joy is still possible.

True joy doesn’t deny pain or wipe it away. True joy sits beside pain and whispers: You, who have known the depths of loss and the fragility of life; you, who have faced nothingness and despair — you are now ready to taste life’s sweetest offerings. You can hold both together, in a messy and tender symphony of being.

Perhaps Sukkot is our ritual of grief. It is, after all, the festival in which we are commanded to be the most joyous — v’samachta b’chagecha. But perhaps that joy comes only after grief. Sukkot strips us of excess, just as grief does. It reveals what is authentic and simple — the basic joy of being alive, of dwelling in nature, of celebrating family and ancestry (ushpizin), of embracing community without the clutter that modernity sells us. It returns us to the wilderness, where our faith in God was all that sustained us.

Sukkot’s many rituals might seem obscure, but each one, I believe, is a path back to wholeness after fragmentation — a way back to fullness after facing impermanence. It’s not about rebuilding layers of illusion, but cultivating gratitude for the simple things and nurturing faith despite despair.

Sukkot asks a simple question: Now that the illusion of permanence has been stripped away; now that material consumption and false security have been exposed; now that our most sacred sentiments have been shaken —can you still enter the sukkah (the place of impermanence, contingency and vulnerability) and feel joy?

If you can, you’ve joined the long and exquisite journey of our people through the wilderness — walking with them beneath a canopy of faith toward the Promised Land.

Tomorrow, on the very day when everything was torn from us two years ago, let us walk that journey again. Let us learn from our heroes who, even after being touched by hevel - nothingness, chose life, meaning, and joy. Let us be part of their legacy — part of our people’s eternal story.

Chag Sameach