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Leah’s Blog – Sukkot 2022- A time of Healing

Sukkot 2022- A time of Healing

Every year we have the mitzvah of the pro- active commandment to feel at home where we should not feel at home – in the sukkah. Comfortable and cozy, I strive to make our sukkah feel like a combination of a tent in Sinai and an Istanbul marketplace. To have a happy and healthy chag is all I ask for. The days leading up to sukkot this year were trying- I had a bad cold that persisted. It had me feeling weak and to be frank, desperate. How would I pull this off? We don’t decide the time to invite – the Torah decides the time for the feasts. Overdosing on garlic drops that the Patriot Nurse prescribed and vitamin c, I lugged up the ornaments and colorful fabrics as Moshe built our Sukkah. It was hard differentiating the hammering all around and the shots in the dark. There is a war going on outside my Sukkah. Every day another soldier is killed, another woman is thrown out of her car to the ground, another rock attack on an innocent family. Driving to any place outside Itamar is playing Russian Roulette. Baruch Hashem- visitors with holy chutzpah continue to come!

The glamour of the fairy lights, mirrored disco balls hanging from the schahch and the contentment that surrounds in the shelter of the sukkah has me on a different plane of reality, a healed one. Exposed in a way, the Torah asks us to be vulnerable. We hold the Lulav and Etrog and shake in all directions- I wave more earnestly into the valley of Shechem where the ushpizin Yosef rests as barrages and blasts rock the night all around. Strangely, I feel at home where the enemy does not want us to feel at home. This is my comfort zone, my Land, my family, my root essence. The journey outside of home takes us into the sukkah of the Tabernacle, into all the sukkot of the generations that lived right here in Israel- how goodly are your tents Israel! This is an agricultural holiday, a feast of thanksgiving for the good earth, the lush green fields; we are that much closer to them now. The Torah asks us to try this one week out of the year. Blessed is Hashem who sprouts the horn of our salvation!

There is a custom of old to invite our forefathers into the sukkah. Every night beginning with Abraham, we remember where we came from and what these great amazing fathers taught us in their particular attributes. Abraham- lovingkindness, Isaac- composure, Yaakov- balance, Yosef- fortitude etc. and for David we say a special prayer when we bless on our meal. “הרחמן הוא יקים לנו את סוכת דוד הנופלת”- “Hashem in your mercy, establish the fallen sukkah of David!” For two thousand years we asked Hashem to please heal us- to bring us back into His home- to actually- take us out of this temporary sukkah! Your children are coming home now!

People are sending me messages that they are thinking of us as this unfolds. To every “Terrible and frustrating” empathy about the deteriorated security situation here, I raise my glass and say, “Lechayim!” The sukkah of David will be re-established! There is the smell of the first rain in the air now. Truly when we fold up the sukkah and put it to rest until next year, the first rains gush down. Sukkot is healing in the rituals we do for rain and the libations we pour in knowing His blessing on these fields. This applies to all the world, not just Israel. Seventy cows are offered by the seventy nations who come to supplicate before Hashem in Jerusalem. We want you all to feel at home! The world is in a state of anxiety now- these are desperate times! The continuity of Hashem’s blessings in revival prophetically promised and delivered will transform all hearts as the fallen rise as do I and you.

Chag sukkot Sameyach- Picture taken at Har Bracha winery today with Shira Lavi (owners)

The winery will be open for all of sukkot-