A Sukkah is a temporary structure that is traditionally built leading up to the holiday of Sukkot - the ancient Jewish festival of harvest and ingathering that has come to represent our people’s history as both agricultural and nomadic people. The Sukkah - like many ritual objects - has a set of parameters it must meet in order to be considered kosher (read: legitimate or “up to snuff”). Amongst other things the Sukkah cannot be a permanent structure, must have at least three walls, and a roof that is made of branches and leaves that allow enough space for the sky to be visible through it. The Sukkah is meant to be decorated with nature's bounty: flowers, gords, and fruit; as well as human (preferable children) made decorations including paper ringlets and other arts & craft projects that can hang from the roof.
Once constructed the Sukkah becomes the center of our activity for the week. We eat our meals in it, we sleep in it, and we perform rituals in it. But there is more. It is not simply a structure, a semi-outdoor room, a temporary dwelling. It is a portal.
The Sukkah is a place with transformational properties. Its porous nature blurs the boundaries of space as well as time. The Sukkah is neither indoors nor outdoors, enclosed nor open, not quite a public space yet not entirely private. The Sukkah’s temporary nature creates defined space where at other times the space it occupies is undefined, leaving the spiritual outline of a container long past the time in which it actually stands.
Like any portal, the Sukkah transports us out of the mundanity of our regular lives and into moments where more and, perhaps most importantly, different things are possible. In the Sukkah a regular meal amongst family and friends can turn into an opportunity to speak about loved ones who have passed by inviting them to join us in our ritual meal. In the Sukkah we can take turns breathing in the fragrance of seasonal fruits and plants while attuning ourselves to the entirety of the world we stand on, all under the loving gaze of our community without the kind of self-consciousness that sort of thing would normally evoke. In the Sukkah we can find ourselves discussing the great mysteries of life and the vastness of the unknowns without the impulse to flee from such discomfort into the numbing allure of our phones. In the Sukkah we can change our relationship with time, drop fully into our bodies, and experience the fullness of the present moment… even if only for a moment.
A portal is porous. Its strength comes from having a boundary that is clear and yet a little open. It is the doorway not the wall. It holds the paradox of structure and movement. It allows us to stay in our own bodies while also connecting to the greater body, to be ourselves while also seeing each other.