D'var Torah by Rabbi Julie Roth, Center for Jewish Life-Princeton Hillel & Zamru

  Sukkot is a holiday that celebrates the vulnerability that is inextricably linked to change.  Because when our ancestors left Egypt, though they were freed from slavery, it would take a new generation and forty years of wandering to fully internalize that new found freedom.  Each of us is on a journey, wandering from one destination to a place of greater expansiveness and more fully realized potential.  We can’t move to that new place if we are too permanent in our ways.  A fully constructed dwelling brings great comfort, but can also tie us down and prevent us from moving and growing.  And yet full exposure to the elements would leave us too vulnerable to leave our comfort zone and venture towards new promises yet unfulfilled.  The Sukkah is a structure that is delicate and mobile, offering some protection, but also inviting us to get up and move to a new place.   In this way, when we sit in a Sukkah, we are reminded that we are on a journey.  We are ever-evolving and change requires both fragility and structure.  And all the while, we see the stars, reminding us that we aspire to change in service of SOMETHING GREATER, in search of our highest ideals, in an attempt to connect with the Holy One.   And in so doing we change, we wander, we internalize, we arrive, vulnerable and protected, ready to embrace the Promised Land.