The Torah tells us: “Live in sukkot for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in sukkot so that your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in sukkot when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Vayikra 23:42–43).
There are two opinions in the Mishna. R. Eliezer held that the sukka represents the Clouds of Glory that surrounded the Israelites during the wilderness years, protecting them from heat during the day and cold during the night, and bathing them with the radiance of the Divine Presence. R. Akiva on the other hand said, “Sukkot mamash,” meaning a sukka is a sukka, no more and no less: it is a hut, a booth, a temporary dwelling. It has no symbolism. It is what it is.
If we follow R. Eliezer then it is obvious why we celebrate by making a sukka. It is there to remind us of a miracle. All three pilgrimage festivals are about miracles. Pesaḥ is about the miracle of the Exodus, Shavuot is about the miracle of the Revelation at Mount Sinai, and Sukkot is about God’s tender care of His people during the journey across the desert. But according to R. Akiva, a sukka is merely a hut, so what was the miracle? There is nothing unusual about living in a hut if you are living a nomadic existence in the desert. Why should there be a festival dedicated to something ordinary, commonplace, and non-miraculous?
Rashbam (Rashi’s grandson) says the sukka was there to remind the Israelites of their past so that at the very moment they were feeling the greatest satisfaction at living in Israel – at the time of the ingathering of the produce of the land – they should remember their lowly origins. They were once a group of refugees without a home, never knowing when they would have to move on. The festival of Sukkot, according to Rashbam, exists to remind us of our humble origins so that we never fall into the complacency of taking for granted our freedom, the land of Israel, and the blessings it yields.
However, there is another way of understanding R. Akiva. The sukka represents the courage the Israelites had to travel, to move, to leave security behind, and follow God’s call, as did Avraham and Sara at the dawn of our history. According to R. Akiva the sukka is the temporary home of a temporarily homeless people. It symbolised the courage of a bride willing to follow her husband on a risk-laden journey to a place she had never seen before – a love that showed itself in the fact that she was willing to live in a hut, trusting her husband’s promise that one day they would have a permanent home.
What is truly remarkable is that Sukkot is called, by tradition, “zeman simḥateinu,” “our time of joy.” That, to me, is the wonder at the heart of the Jewish experience: that Jews throughout the ages were able to experience risk and uncertainty at every level of their existence and yet they were still able to rejoice. That is spiritual courage of a high order. Faith is not certainty; faith is the courage to live with uncertainty. Faith is the ability to rejoice in the midst of instability and change, travelling through the wilderness of time towards an unknown destination.