Nighttime in My Succah: Feeling safe while feeling vulnerable

Is there anything more wonderful than the experience of feeling safe while feeling vulnerable?  I think it may be one of the most rare feelings we experience in our lives.

I believe that most of us experience it with our mothers when we are young.

And some of us are blessed to fall in love with and marry spouses who give us the same sheltering feeling.

You know, it is that feeling that you can open up about some part of you that you are terribly afraid to show to most people.  It is showing your unprotected tummy, the part of you without any armor.

You know you are safe with the person you are exposing your inner-self to, and you feel so comforted to be able to open up to them without any guards up.  But yet, even in a case of perfect trust, you can not help but feel a visceral current of fear as you open up.  You know that you have allowed yourself to become unnaturally vulnerable.  And in doing so, you feel safer than anywhere else in the world.

I felt that tonight in my Succah.  It was after 10pm, and I want back in to say my Grace after Meals.  My two little boys (8 and 10 years old) had gone to sleep in the Succah tonight, quite excited to be camping out there.  The Succah was illuminated only by a night-light, and as I said my thank-you prayer for the meal I had eaten, I took in the feeling of seeing them in ther serenity sleeping under the 'Schach'.

The Schach, of course, is the simple covering of branches that provides a limited amount of shelter for the seven days we dwell in the Succah.  Some make it out of bamboo, some out of pine, and here we make ours out of fresh-cut palm branches.  It actually feels a bit like Gilligan's Island, but with a Jewish touch!

Sitting there in the gentle glow of my boys' night-light, with the green palm-fronds softly illuminated, hearing a cricket singing outside, the power of the Succah suddenly touched me in a way I have never felt.

I felt so safe.

I felt safe, like I suddenly recognized my boys felt going to sleep in the Succah that night.

I remembered what it felt like when my father used to build our Succah out of wood and boards and hammer and nails when I was little (as I do, today), even though most of our friends built theirs out of quick-assemble canvas-and-metal-frame kits.

It felt so great.  And the Succah we built felt strong and eternal and magical.

And then I looked up at the Schach tonight.  It was so thin.  Just as Jewish law counsels, I could see the stars through the branches.  And I felt so safe.  I felt exposed and unprotected, but in the most wonderful and natural way.  I realized, for a very, very brief second, that my life and all of our lives are always this exposed and thinly protected, but we are safe because God keeps us safe.

I wished I could sit there for eight days without leaving.  I wished I could imagine what it was like to live in such a shelter and with such sustained faith for 40 years, as our ancestors did.

And I wondered about how much we are meant to take care of ourselves - to do for ourselves - and at what point we are meant to let go and fully rely on God?

If God is protecting us, why build a Succah or make any effort to provide for ourselves?

And if God-forbid, God were not protecting us, what good does a Succah or any of our efforts do?


And so I thought that perhaps the answer is in the guidance of Jewish law regarding how we build the Schach.  The Schach must provide more shade than sunlight, but yet must remain thin enough to see the stars through it at night.

And it occured to me:  It is right that we should do our best to protect ourselves from the elements of life - to succeed and to earn a living and to live comfortably.  But we should never do so to an extreme where we forget that these things are not the source of our blessing, but a result of being blessed by God.  We need to see the stars through the lattice of our efforts. 

If the work of our hands becomes so grand that we forget that it is not our own hands that protect us, than we have surely lost our way.

We are each so very delicate and vulnerable.  And we are each so very safe.

A loving God is watching over us, always.