Rocking The Boat
Succos and living life at sea
Change, impermanence, temporality—these are oft-repeated, well-worn themes of the Succos holiday. Of course, just because something is a cliché does not make it untrue. Most things become clichés precisely because they are accurate. What they often suggest is that we've become numb to an idea. While everyone knows, for example, that "money doesn't buy happiness", few of us embody such a philosophy.
We are still traumatised by the Hamas massacre on October 7th. Trauma is often described as a radical disruption of one's ideas about the world, forcing an irreconcilable shift in one's sense of reality. Rav Eliyahu Dessler reflected on the Holocaust using the metaphor of a child grieving the loss of a toy ship. Our universe is partly a self-constructed illusion; thus, we are paralysed when it shatters. At these moments, a higher reality peers in from beyond the facade. Disintegration exposes our securities as fundamentally hollow.
Even as the sheer loss and suffering sink in, we remain shaken by an existential crisis. The stark and sudden awakening of the precarious Jewish condition has been intensely disorienting. There's more to it than just Israel's fanatical foes forcing their 'ring of fire' around the Jewish state. The hatred we thought consigned to history is back, wearing reimagined masks. Today's spiralling antisemitism feels like a grotesque re-enactment of a dreadful past. Hating Jews is cool again. It's even progressive. Notice the bizarre links being drawn between the most obscure causes and Israel. Even Greta Thunberg feels climate change is somehow synonymous with Palestinian rights. Activists have grokked that by tying their advocacy to anti-Israel sentiment, they will ride a strange and dark wave of popularity. Thus, they act as pied pipers for the masses who swell towards an ancient siren song whispering: "The Jews are our misfortune."
Of course, when we step back, we realise that none of this started on October 7th. It’s been with us for a long time. Iran has plotted for decades. Antisemitism never disappeared from bubbling beneath the surface of acceptable social discourse. We just failed to internalise these things concretely. All the terror attack did was jolt us out of our slumber and shatter our illusions. Like a child grieving a broken toy from Rav Dessler's analogy, we face the fragility of an imagined world.
The Talmud (Bava Basra 73b) records Rabbah Bar Bar Chanah relating that once when travelling by boat, he encountered a large fish upon which sand had accumulated. He and his fellow travellers disembarked, thinking it was an island, and began cooking a meal on "land". But soon, the earth beneath them trembled, the fire too hot for the sea creature to bear. What they thought was solid ground turned out to be a living, breathing creature. The giant fish turned, and they quickly fled back to their ship.
In a broad sense, the above parable challenges us: Is it possible that the security we so desperately seek is a mirage? Perhaps the very thing we strive for, that solid ground beneath our feet, isn't where we belong. And more: What if authentic meaning is not found in the comfort we seek but in the very instability we fear? Despite the sailors' belief that they would find safety on land, it was the ship—the place of motion, uncertainty, and risk— which was revealed as the only possible security.
In many places, the Maharal argues that proper stability and wholeness cannot exist in our limited world because anything finite is inherently incomplete. Anything that projects flawless or absolute perfection inevitably hides a profound shortcoming. Just think about the Death Star! The Succah, as a temporary shelter, conveys transience. Its message is that true spirituality can never be found in stagnation, however reassuring stillness may feel.
As Jews, where is the strength we can cling to in our daily lives? What is the proverbial boat we must run to as we wake up from the illusion of solid ground beneath our feet? There is no one correct answer to this question. But over the last year, I have found deep comfort in the insight of our oral Torah.
The oral Torah is a famously ever-evolving entity. Its dynamic nature is explicitly conveyed in the initial injunction against its being written down. And the multilayered discussions, debates, and interpretations that fill its pages shaped Jewish law and practice for millennia. Torah wisdom is the lifeblood of our people, and it must never ossify or become sterile. Our daily blessing over the Torah is striking in its language. We bless God not for "having given" the Torah, as a past event, but as the One "who gives" the Torah, in the active present tense—nosen haTorah. The Shem Mishmuel suggests this is because, rather than being a frozen relic, the Torah is something God perpetually breathes fresh meaning into. In fact, he contends that Torah would not be Torah at all without this constant active element. Similarly, Rav Kook maintains that it is precisely the shifting nature of Torah, what he calls its techuna mepaelet, that enables it to change and mould us. It is its shifting nature and stubborn intransigence that is so life-giving.
Right now, as our world trembles beneath us, we crave calm. Perhaps, though, we were always meant to dwell in the tension of uncertainty. Succos teaches us that nothing is truly stable in this world. Instability, however, opens up worlds of spiritual possibilities. Our ship is not the island we mistook for permanence, but the Torah itself, dynamic and alive. We have navigated it through the turbulent waves of history and suffering. And in its motion, its ebb and flow, we stay afloat whilst drawing closer to God.
Keep Pondering, and Have A Wonderful Succos!
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Another terrific article!
BS"D
Yaacov besides constantly inspring oldtimers like myself:), you've opened a door for me. When the war broke out, people from my prep school in Memphis Tennesee reached out to hear about what's going on. I struck it off a bit with the religious studies teacher [not Jewish] we've stayed in contact. I forwarded this article to him and responded by inviting me to speak to his students. This is an excellent opportunity for me to present Jews and Judaism to young kids who would unlikly have such an opportunity.
Keep up the highly relevant work.