October 17, 2008

I've got some sobering news. Breaking the glass under the chuppah - it's not a cue for "mazel tov", nor even to strike up the band, or even yet a wake-up alarm after the Rabbi's pre-fab wedding speech. It's a remembrance of the Temple's destruction. That great place of such joy and pride, such spiritual clarity and perfection (did you know there were ten constant miracles - suspensions of the natural order - for over seven hundred years of recorded history), that symbol of our oneness with the Almighty and hope for a perfected word, to this House of God do we mourn, do we yearn. The Wall in Jerusalem speaks of this loss and is the one place every Jewish soul can pour itself out. But what a downer, right? On such an occasion as your wedding, specifically the final moments of infinite commitment and immortal connection? One might say we need to quell our euphoria while the Jewish people dwell in exile (yes, even living in Jerusalem it's a far far far cry from what it should be), true. But more deeply, we sense the urgency for a great marriage and realize to which end we will guide and build our families and homes. Which is the void that needs our filling.
This Shabbos, the one that falls within the holiday of Sukkot, will bring with it a reading of King Solomon's Kohelet and the famous exhortation, "There's nothing new under the sun." The man who had it all - the wisest, richest, most powerful - spills much precious ink to rid our minds and hearts of all things empty, vain and transparent, and begs us to realize pursue everlasting truth. And this we read on Sukkkot, amidst the splendor and joy of the harvest, of the myriad of Mitzvos, the purity of atonement, the bounty of blessing, and our dwelling in the Sukkah under God's shade and protection. Our Sages have affectionately dubbed Sukkot 'the time of our simcha' and created and encouraged unparalleled festivities - those same Sages decreed we read Kohelet smack in the middle. Again, not simply to dampen our simcha (why, the Sages decreed the first 'rave' - a week long festival in the Temple called Simcha Beis HaShoevah), but rather to harness the atomic power of simcha and channel it properly.

The Sukkah is the chuppah of the Jewish people. It serves as the dna, so to speak, of our marriage with God. The Jew loathes the spiritual tryst and thirsts for the romance, longevity and life-giving ends of total oneness. God created marriage to teach us this truth. And spiritual debauchery will go the same way as tattered and unsuccessful marriages have gone themselves. A Jew uses the heights of simcha, happiness, to ridicule the physical, roast it for all its temporal muck, and catapult himself into the realms of spiritual being. We eat, drink, sing, dance, sleep, marry - every physical sense there is - in or around the sukkah, at precisely this time of year, only to ignite that colossal reservoir of fuel in one giant explosion of spiritual greatness.

Wishing you oodles and oodles of Simcha and Blessing,

Rabbi Lynn