G

BRSINHRI
TIH O M E

CONSTRUCTING AND
DECONSTRUCTING
SUKKOT
By MICKI WEINBERG

“It is not men’s consciousness that

determines their existence, but on the
contrary, their social existence that
determines their consciousness.”
K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy. (1859)

“Only when consciousness stands in such a

relation to reality can theory and practice
be united. But for this to happen the
emergence of consciousness must
become the decisive step which the
historical process must take towards its
proper end…”
Georg Lukacs,
History and Class Consciousness. p2 (1923)
We will start with two rounds of questions
before we engage:

The first shots:

How much of consciousness is a product of a social existence and
how much of social existence is a product of consciousness?
What type of consciousness do you seek?
Where does the content of your answer come from?
Where do you want to end up?
Do you want to end up with your sweaty back against a wall that you
built yourself?
Pray that the bullet misses you!

The second shots:

How do you relate to ritual and tradition?
Do attempts to make ritual and tradition “interesting,” “relevant”, and
“meaningful” blindly miss the point?
Isn’t the “meaning” that is introduced from outside also a social
product?
Why are contemporary values privileged?
Can we consider the opposite?
Can the rituals and traditions be valid on their own terms?
Perhaps, it is more a choice of one meaning-making construct over
another?
And finally, if that is the case, can we invert the situation—instead
of attempts at making ritual and tradition meaningful, can ritual and
tradition make life meaningful?

The questions have been shot.

Remove your blindfold.
Let’s read on and see where the bullets reach…
CONSTRUCTION
From Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, we experienced a rehearsal of the
human story—from conception to world-making and engagement to
ultimately transcending the limiting categories that life imposes on
us. On Yom Kippur, in a dramatic enactment of otherworldly bliss, we
fasted and became like “angels.” Yom Kippur ended and we returned
to a not-so-angelic world, with material and existential needs. Yet now
we enter the world, empowered and spiritually enabled, to construct a
new and different life that reflects the attitudes we cultivated during
the High Holy Days.

How long can this last for? As the days go by, we are subject to new
influences and many of the values that reigned supreme yesterday
are no longer meaningful today. It is no secret how dependent
meaning is on context and use. The forms and language (not only
through words, but also the language of body, gesture, space,
architecture, movement, music and more) that we use to construe
and construct meaning, whether consciously or not, can be decisive in
shaping meaning itself—challenging the notion that there are any fixed
truths and essences free from context.

Does acknowledging this destroy the concept of “truth?” Does

the fact that we are products and subjects influenced and shaped
by a multiplicity of sources destroy the very notion of “self” and
autonomy? Maybe, we can say that, whether we’re conscious or not,
our notion of “truth”, “self”, “higher spiritual power” or anything else
for that matter, depends on what “game” we are playing.  Austrian
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s terms, “language game 1” and “form
of life 2” might help us in exploring this idea.

1. Philosophical Investigations (1953), § 7

2. ibid. § 19
TRADITION AS A FORM OF LIFE

Tamar Ross explains 3 how we can look at religious language and

practice as a means in constructing a “form of life”:

“Religious language is a long established form of discourse that does

a particular set of jobs, imparting its own particular ‘form of life’
to those who participate in its ‘language game.’ The participants
employing religious discourse are engaging a system of symbols
that legitimate their most basic patterns of thought, feeling, and
behavior…It also reflects a ‘picture’ of reality that shapes and
produces profound sentiments, attitudes, and awarenesses….the main
purpose of religious doctrine is indeed to grant meaning to the ‘form
of life’ through which we live by attributing to it divine purpose.”

Do you find that the sentiment expressed by Professor Ross can

liberate us from a limited relationship to tradition? Might this allow us
to explore the meanings of ritual, doctrines, and terms in a far more
expansive way?

The holiday of Sukkot is a collective exercise in constructing a form

of life that is both a subjective process for the individual (who builds
the sukkah) and a collective social experiment in intersubjectivity (as
each person enters the sukkah that the other built). Physically (in
the act of building or entering the sukkah space) and intellectually
(as we are doing now, in how we give meaning to the sukkah) we see
the constructive approach in full play—where the holiday operates
as a living experiment in constructing sanctity and even “the God-
construct.”

3. Constructing Faith (2016), p.102-104.

SITUATING THE DIVINE

This constructive attitude towards the divine is not some

contemporary attempt to salvage the divine, but is fully present in the
Jewish mystical tradition. The mystics of Kabbalah went so far as to
say that the entire notion of the “Divine” and “sanctity” are human
constructs! 4 They concluded that if humanity wants to experience the
richness of the divine and a spiritual life—then humanity must make
it through a variety of practices and exercises. Did they see the
spiritual concept as a product of construction enacted through the
equivalent of language games and forms of life?
 
The great Hasidic sage, R. Avrahom Yehoshua Heschel of Apta (1748-
1825) expressed this sentiment when he taught 5 that “on account of
keeping the Torah and its rules it is as if we make the Creator.” Not the
other way around, as is the case with a more fundamentalist attitude.
Here—there are no fixed fundaments; it is humanity that is capable
of determining what form of life it wishes to create, inhabit, and live
through--even so far as creating what form of divinity it desires (if at
all).

Do you engage in “spiritual design?” Have you experienced sanctity

in your life? Where have you experienced these different forms of
sanctity? If sanctity is something you seek, what can you do to
generate it or draw it out of the spaces you inhabit?

According to the R. Heschel of Apta 6, faith did not mean naively

believing in something irrational. To him, faith meant creatively drawing
out and proactively cultivating sanctity. Indeed, the Zohar describes
the shade of the Sukkah as the “shade of faith 7”—and with our
understanding of faith as the craft in constructing the Sacred, we see
that sukkot is a practice in spiritual design—literally.

4. Zohar 3.113a
5. Ateret Tzvi: Acharay Mot (quoted by R. Zvi Hirsch Eichenstein of Zidichov)
6. Ohev Yisrael: Noach: “The term “emunah” is to be understood in the language of ‘drawing out’ and ‘growing/developing’…oman
[compare to omanut, art/craft] For in emunah there is a power that enables the thing to be drawn out from its source and to come forth…”
7. Zohar 3: 103a
Sukkot is associated with the patriarch Yaakov 8 who is described as
having built sukkot 9. The connection with Yaakov is very telling—as
Yaakov’s “discovery” of divinity is through a dream with a ladder 10:

“He had a dream; a ladder was set on the ground and its top reached
to the sky,
and angels of God were going up and down on it. And behold, the
Divine stood
upon it…”

Notice that the ladder starts from the ground, and the angels go
up and then down (not down and then up, which would suggest an
external “higher” origin)—this implies that the construct comes from
Yaakov, and humanity is responsible for constructing the divine.

In the Jewish tradition, “angels” have been understood as thoughts 11,

drives, as well as other contemplative and intellectual activities of the
mind. Faith, like a ladder, is constructed and built. We have no leap of
faith that requires us to lie to ourselves or “believe in” something that
is not aligned with the way we see life—rather we construct faith. We
“generate” the angels and divinity, and it is our choice what world we
construct—where is the ladder you are constructing now leading to?

THE SUKKAH AND FORM

With this in mind, we can now explore the details of the sukkah and
observe what attitudes and forms of life they generate. The tradition
invites us to leave our fixed dwellings and reside in the sukkah as a
temporary dwelling12 for seven days 13.

8. Jacob Ben Asher (1270-ca. 1340) Tur, Orach Chaim 417

9. Bereshit 33.17
10. Bereshit 28:12-13
11. See Shlomo Ibn Gabirol quoted by Ibn Ezra on Bereshit 28.12
12. Talmud Bavli Sukkah 2a
13. Vayikra 23.42
The temporary and ephemeral nature of the Sukkah is obligatory
and key—in stark opposition to those that claim that there are fixed
and permanent forms in life. So often, we get attached and fetishize
language, form, categories, definitions and other structures—so much
so that we take them for granted and doggedly pursue them without
any grand goal in mind. This is most tragic today—when our social
and political life seems to be dominated across the board by those
obsessed with definitions and category.

Sukkot, a holiday all about form and category, undermines form and
category by emphasizing it’s impermanence. The sukkah must be
temporary, otherwise it is not kosher! We see that sanctity is situated
not in the fixed, but in the ephemeral. We don’t return to the same
sukkah every year—instead, each year we build it anew.
Sukkot’s ambivalence to form reflects our own ambivalence. The Polish
writer Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) accurately describes 14 this
tension:

“Man is made in such a way that he continually has to define himself and
continually escapes his own definitions. Reality is not about to let itself
be completely enclosed in form. Form for its part does not agree with
the essence of life. Yet all thought that tries to define the inadequacy
of form becomes form in its turn and thus only confirms our tendency
towards form.”

Sukkot is an acknowledgment that form is only a necessary concession

and a means towards something else—in the case of Sukkot, towards
generating the sacred in life, and life in the sacred. But the sukkah is
only a concession!

14. See Jacques Ehrmann’s Structuralism, p. vii

THE SACRED SUKKAH

R. Yehuda Leib Don-Yahya (1868-1941) observed that in the sukkah, itself

a sacred space, one eats, sleeps, and partakes in the full spectrum of
human physical and emotional activities. This serves as a living metaphor
of the spiritualization of all aspects of life. Every action must serve
a higher purpose—in his eyes, unifying and uplifting the divine sparks
concealed in all humanity and in all aspects of existence. He taught 15:

“…Judaism sanctifies the matters of life…and does not demand that one
must detach from physical life…rather physical life should be a means
to spiritual life…the main point is to dwell permanently in a completely
spiritualized world, yet it is forbidden to forfeit material life; [which]
should be made into a means to spiritual life, and…[material/physical life]
too should be sanctified…”

Interestingly, R. Don-Yahya, who witnessed the Russian revolution, and

sided in many ways with the revolutionaries, recognized that without an
elevating spiritual force, the revolution and all the revolutionary tools
could lose their power 16. Today, are we witnessing something similar—
where so many sides, even those motivated by the best intentions, lack
a higher, transcendent purpose?

We see how for the mystics, all activities, even the most mundane,
were seen as pathways towards constructing the divine in life—and the
sukkah was seen as the ultimate structure of divinity 17. And even the
sukkah is discarded once the holiday ends! Each year a new sukkah is
built, a new sanctity is constructed, a new truth is lived—and we discard
the husk that contained it because the light is what matters.

Indeed, the revolutionary, anarchist and mystic, Rabbi Shmuel Alexandrov

(1865-1941), argued 18 that, “In every era the tools that were produced
according to the spiritual situation of the previous era break down in the
era that follows…”

15. Bikkurei Yehuda p28

16. Bikkurei Yehuda p15
17. See R. Menahem Recanati commentary on Emor for a Kabbalistic description of the Sukkah
18. R. Shmuel Alexandrov, Letter to A. Hilewitz, Tammuz, 5688 (1928), Babruysk
To R. Alexandrov, the only thing that was fixed was the abstract notion
of the Infinite that each mystic strived to realize in life. According to this
line of thought, we need mediating tools and categories to filter 19 that
“infinite light”; but these are only, as the Zen Buddhists say, “fingers
pointing at the moon.”

The Talmudic text 20 discussing the rules of Sukkot is very clear that:
“‘You shall make’ [the sukkot] and not [use] that which was already
made” and the covering (schach) on the sukkah’s roof must be
detached. What is key here is that the sukkah must each year be made
anew by you—and you cannot build it once and use it each time each
year. This ensures a yearly renewal—allowing for a new sukkah, and new
means for sanctity. After all, you change and the world changes.

Also important is that the covering be made from detached material—

like everything else in the world, from the language we speak to
the bodies we have, we did not choose them—they are given and
attached to previous conceptions and structures. But if we want to
make them our own, we must detach them from the world in order to
incorporate them into our own new structures. The same can be said
in life—detaching the content that we are born into is the first step in
transformation. And observe—detachment does not mean ignoring! We
acknowledge what’s around us, but we repurpose everything for a higher
goal.

The sukkah is a concession to the fact that no matter what, we will be

living through structures, knowingly and unknowingly, willfully and not.
Here—in a grand enactment we willfully choose the structure as the
ultimate anti-structure.

As we go through the Sukkot process in the end we will dismantle the

very structure of holiness that we built. During those 7 days we sought
and experienced unity through a (constructed as everything is) higher
consciousness, through a (constructed as everything is) light. What do
you want to remain? The structure or the light

19. Indeed, the kabbalists associated the sukkah with the sefirah of malkhut, which is described as the mediating filter between
the transcendent and immanent. See R. Moshe Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim 23.15
20. Talmud Bavli Sukkah 11b