Sunday, September 12, 2021
The culmination of the great month of Tishrei occurs with the commemoration of the holiday of Succot. It provides a joyful relief and release from the intensity of the first two major holidays of the month, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. While we experience an enjoyable sense of celebration, of commemoration and exalted purpose with these two unmatched high holy days, there is a sense of tension and even foreboding that accompanies them since they are days of judgment and of heavenly decree.
This holiday of Succot, with its emphasis on the beauty of nature and the freedom from being housebound, provides an emotional and psychological relief that, to a great extent. characterizes the...
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Sunday, September 12, 2021
These last chapters of the Torah, culminating in this week's reading, are all a very serious and have an almost fearsome quality and tone. Heaven and earth are called upon to be the ultimate witnesses regarding the covenant that the Lord has made with Israel for all time. Rashi points out to us that human witnesses and even historical tradition within families, tribes and other groups are insufficient to uphold the veracity of the covenant between God and Israel. Human beings, by their very natures, can only see things superficially, and remember things selectively and often with a bias and/or agenda.
This is not the case with nature that always does the will of the creator and has no...
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