This week’s Torah commentary, written by Hebrew Seminary rabbinical student Sef McCarter, has been sponsored by Rabbi Jonah Rank.
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Immediately after the intensity of Yom Kippur we step into Sukkot. At first this can feel like a paradox. After a day of trembling before the King of Kings we are commanded to rejoice. The Torah calls this festival zeman simchateinu (זמן שמחתנו, “the season of our joy”). What does it mean to move from confession to joy in such a short span of time? The answer is found in the sukkah, the small and temporary hut that is at the heart of this festival. It teaches that teshuvah (תשובה, “repentance”), is not the end of the journey. It is the beginning of transformation.
The sukkah is a small, temporary dwelling that Jews are commanded to live in for the week of Sukkot. Its walls can be built of simple materials like wood, cloth, or canvas, but its sekhakh (סכך, ‘roof’) must be made of cut branches, leaves, or reeds, through which the stars can be seen at night. Families gather inside to eat their meals, some even sleep there, and we invite both friends and our spiritual ancestors as ushpizin (אושפיזין), as symbolic “guests.” On the surface, the sukkah is fragile, open to wind and rain, and hardly the kind of place we would normally call secure. Yet that fragility is its very meaning. It recalls the temporary shelters of our ancestors in the wilderness and teaches us that security is not found in walls of stone but in the presence of HaShem. To step into the sukkah is to step into a space where faith replaces certainty and trust replaces control.
In Exodus 33:22, Moshe pleads with HaShem to show him the Divine Presence. HaShem answers, “I will place you in the cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with My hand until I pass by.” The great revelation of the Shabbat occurring during Sukkot is not fire or thunder but shelter in fragility. Moshe experiences the Divine not by conquering a mountain but by being placed gently in the rock, covered and held by HaShem. The sukkah mirrors this moment. Its walls are thin and its roof is made of branches that let the sky peek through. From the outside, it looks too fragile to protect anyone, yet, within it, we are surrounded by the presence of HaShem. Just as Moshe was held in the rock, so too are we held in the sukkah, fragile in appearance but strong enough to carry us through.
A caterpillar spins for itself a fragile and temporary dwelling. Inside that shell it is neither what it once was nor what it will become. It is in a stage of hidden transformation. That is exactly what the sukkah provides for us. The sukkah is neither our permanent home and nor a fortress of stone. The sukkah is a temporary dwelling, where HaShem holds us while we change. The fragility itself is part of the lesson. Like the caterpillar, we enter a space that feels vulnerable and incomplete, yet it is in that very space that the possibility of wings is formed. The sukkah reminds us that holiness often takes root in places that appear weak, yet in reality they are filled with Divine strength.
In thinking about the sukkah as a cocoon of transformation, I am reminded of the teaching of Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, better known as the Vilna Ga’on, the great 18th century sage of Vilna. He taught that the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah is unlike any other commandment because this one surrounds the entire person. Tefillin involve the arm and the head; tzitzit involves a torso; Shabbat candles involve the hands; only does a sukkah envelop us completely. It is a mitzvah that we enter with our whole self—body and soul together. The Vilna Ga’on also compared the sukkah to an embrace, a hug from the Divine. To step into the sukkah is to step into the arms of HaShem, who surrounds us in love. This image deepens our understanding of Sukkot as the season of joy. Joy comes not because life is free of struggle but because we are embraced fully in the shelter of the Divine. (See Ma’aseh Rav 233, written by the Vilna Ga’on’s student Rabbi Sa’adyah ben Natan Neta.)
The Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 86b, teaches that teshuvah that comes from a place of love can transform sins into merits. Transformation is not only about leaving behind what was broken. It is about reshaping it into the ground where new life can grow. The caterpillar’s old body becomes the very substance that produces the butterfly’s wings. In the same way, our past, our mistakes, and even our wounds can be the soil from which we emerge renewed. What once brought shame can become a source of resilience. What once weighed us down can be reshaped into wisdom and hope. The sukkah becomes the sacred space where this reshaping begins. Surrounded by fragility, we learn that transformation is not a denial of our past but a sanctification of it.
Sukkot also urges us to rejoice, fulfilling the biblical words vesamachta bechagekha (וְשָׂמַחְתָּ֖ בְּחַגֶּ֑ךָ, “you shall rejoice in your festival”) (Deuteronomy 16:14). Joy in this season is not naïve optimism or the absence of pain. It is the fruit of transformation. When we sit in the sukkah, we declare that strength does not come from walls of stone or roofs of concrete. Strength comes from HaShem, the Rock who shelters us. The sukkah’s fragility reminds us that real security does not come from what we build but from whom we trust. Rejoicing in the sukkah is not about ignoring the storms of life but about knowing that even in the storm we are surrounded by HaShem’s embrace.
Moshe is then shown HaShem’s mercy: “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in kindness and truth” (Exodus 34:6). These words are the wings we carry with us when we leave the sukkah. They remind us that what sustains us is not permanence or power but mercy and love. The transformation that begins with confession on Yom Kippur becomes embodied as we sit in the sukkah. The fragile dwelling becomes the womb of compassion, teaching us that we are always held in the presence of HaShem’s mercy.
Sukkot is not only a festival of harvest or a memory of the wilderness. It is the festival of becoming. Like Moshe in the cleft of the rock, like the caterpillar in the cocoon, we are held for a moment in fragile shelter. And when we step out, we do so changed. We rise lighter, freer, and ready to spread wings we did not know we had. In the joy of Sukkot we learn that transformation is possible, not only once a year but in every moment we choose to enter the shelter of HaShem and allow ourselves to become new.
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