Indiana University Press
Shulamit Reinharz - The Transformation of Sukkot Into Sukkat Shalom - Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues 6 Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues 6 (2003) 50-52

The Transformation of Sukkot into Sukkat Shalom

Shulamit Reinharz
The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute


A contemporary Jewish joke has it that most Jewish holidays can be summarized as follows: They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat.

In actuality, this formula applies to only a few holidays—primarily Hanukah, Purim, and Pesach. Perhaps the quintessential celebration of survival is Pesach. The theme of leaving slavery for freedom has become an enduring motif in Judaism. Each holiday that deals with survival or freedom invokes cunning, military prowess, courage, and defiance of authority. Reliving these states of mind each year allows Jews to experience emotions of relief, strength, and hope.

Sukkot, the subject of this essay, has the potential of enabling Jews to deal not with survival and victory, but with the fragility of life and peace. What is the desired emotional experience of Sukkot? According to scripture and Jewish liturgy, Sukkot is zeman simhatenu—the time of our joy. On Sukkot Jews should feel joy without grounding that joy in the relief of having overcome murderous foes.

Jewish feminists have paid attention to the holidays that mark the Jewish calendar. We have reinvigorated Purim with celebratory and critical re-evaluations of Vashti and Esther, Ahasuerus and Mordechai. Feminist activists have also had a major impact on interpreting and observing Pesach, by initiating women's seders and, more recently, by introducing the orange to the seder plate. 1 What about Sukkot? Do we as feminists have anything to bring to a sukkah?

The answer is yes, but we are at a very early stage in its reinterpretation. The holiday of Sukkot could be closely tied to women's experiences, both traditional and contemporary. Furthermore, if feminism, as I understand [End Page 50] and experience it, is deeply bound up with the quest for peace, Sukkot has great potential for enabling us to move toward peace during a time of war.

It is not hard to find feminine significance in the flimsy but beautiful and fragrant structures in which we are bidden to dwell during Sukkot. A sukkah is a temporary home that does not so much look like a home as symbolize one; it creates a sense of home, as so many women have done for their families throughout the centuries. 2 A sukkah is decorated, echoing the major role played by women in caring for the aesthetics of their homes. The sukkah can be experienced as a room of one's own, very personalized and ever-changing. And the sukkah, neither in the house nor in the public domain, is a liminal space like that occupied by women and emergent feminists—a space where many things might happen. But what about the joy associated with the sukkah?

The joy welling up through the past may be welded to the memory that the wandering of the Israelites came to an end, that the wandering included the receiving of the Torah, and that the people were sustained in their wandering. But what might renew our joy in this day and age? The only joy that I think is meaningful today is the relief we would feel were the violence in the Middle East to come to an end. Our sukkot could be joyful places if they were sukkot shalom—tabernacles of peace.

Echoing this theme, the American Jewish Committee produced a Thanksgiving Haggadah in 2001 to respond to the profound grief that Americans felt after the September 11 terror attacks. Drawing on the Jewish liturgy, they wrote:

Spread over us the shelter of your peace.
Remove the adversary from before us and from behind us,
and in the shadow of your wings, shelter us.

Is there anything that feminists can do to add to the holiday of Sukkot, to strengthen its connection to peace, to reinforce the meaning of a sukkat shalom?

As Yitzhak Rabin reminded us, we need to make peace with our enemies, not with our friends. That is the challenge. Jews have a tradition of hakhnasat orhim, of hospitality, that is given a special emphasis on Sukkot. There is a desert tradition of inviting people into your tent: Mah tovu ohaleikha Ya'akov—How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! I suggest that we ask not only for the adversary to be removed from before us and behind us, but for our [End Page 51] relationship with our adversaries to be transformed when we invite them to sit with us in the sukkah.

A sukkah takes a certain amount of work and effort. It must be built and decorated, and food must be carried out to it. The sukkah does not simply appear. So, too, does sukkat shalom require work and effort. It must be created; it does not simply appear. 3 Feminist Jews could take a step toward realizing the joyous potential of the sukkah by truly making it a sukkat shalom and doing the work necessary to create peaceful relations with others—both personal intimates and political adversaries. The aroma and beauty of the sukkah, and its fragility, might help create new experiences and new relationships.



Shulamit Reinharz is the Jacob Potofsky Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University and the founding director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, formerly known as the Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Women. Her next book, co-edited with Mark Raider, concerns the role of American Jewish women in developing the Yishuv and establishing the State of Israel.

Endnotes

1. See Sonia Zylberberg, "Oranges and Seders: Symbols of Jewish Women's Wrestlings," in the last issue of Nashim (no. 5, 2002: Gender, Food, and Survival), pp. 148-171.

2. The first sukkah I built on my own went up the night before I gave birth to my second daughter. I used strings and twigs, like a bird, and built a nest.

3. The principal of a local Jewish day school told the following story: Her school has a sukkat shalom, and when students have problems with each other and want to try to resolve them, they go into the sukkat shalom. One young boy tried it the other day, and then reported to her: I went in and nothing happened! He had been under the impression that simply "being there" made peace.

Share