When I was growing up, my family never built a sukkah. We were too tired. We had just taken off from work and school to attend high holiday services, and we’d prayed and repented, and fasted, and hosted people for break fast. Besides, building a sukkah was something the synagogue did and something the rabbi did, and you could go to those sukkot if you really wanted your sukkah fix.
I now build a sukkah every year, and I do it not just because now I’m the rabbi. I build a sukkah every year because it becomes one of the most powerful Jewish tools for self-reflection, gratitude, and hospitality.
Today is Rosh Hashanah. It is an opportunity to envision what we want this coming year to look like. In that vein, I am going to focus on Sukkot, and the people we can welcome into our sukkot celebrations. Sukkot invites us to counter the fear, sense of scarcity, and social separation that are so deeply entrenched in our city and our country.
And in order to celebrate Sukkot, we will need to start by being, well, happy. The instructions regarding Sukkot appear more than once in the Torah. In Deuteronomy Chapter 16 we are commanded :
(13) After the ingathering from your threshing floor and your vat, you shall hold the Feast of Booths for seven days. (14) You shall rejoice in your festival, with your son and daughter, your male and female slave, the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow in your communities. (15)You shall hold a festival for the Eternal your God seven days, in the place that the Eternal will choose; for the Eternal your God will bless all your crops and all your undertakings, and you shall have nothing but joy.
Sukkot is called z’man simchateinu, the time of our happiness, the time when we shall have nothing but joy. We express gratitude for the harvest with which we have been blessed. Gratitude for the freedom that allowed us to build temporary shelters in the desert and allows us to celebrate the holiday today. Gratitude for the abundance that allows us to invite guests into our sukkot. Sukkot is like the Jewish Thanksgiving. We are expected to be joyful, as we choose to see abundance over scarcity, and choose to feel gratitude over insecurity.
Because while we are celebrating our abundance, we live in a booth outdoors. We recognize our own vulnerability and are required to see the stars through our roof. We see the stars and recognize the vastness of our universe. We are tiny.
Sukkot reminds us that we can simultaneously experience overflowing abundance and humbling insecurity. We can be both powerful and powerless. We live in a time when we are expected to be one or the other. But Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer, Director of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, reminds us that we are living in a time of unprecedented Jewish communal privilege and power. And we live in a time of the most fatal act of antisemitism in the history of the United States. We can be both vulnerable and vigilant and grateful and joyful for the abundance we enjoy.
And after we recognize our abundance, we can celebrate the abundance in the diversity in our community, if only we take time to notice.
Deuteronomy states that you shall rejoice with your son and your daughter, your male and female slave, the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow in your communities. In other words, those who are the most vulnerable in your community. Or perhaps those who could easily go unnoticed.
And even today, not everyone on Deuteronomy’s list has been given the attention they are due. So we are going to invite them into our sukkot. In particular, this morning, I want to focus on our sons and daughters, the Jews who we have made to feel like strangers, and the economically vulnerable. In other words, people in this room, who are likely underrepresented in this room.
Let’s start with our kids, and as you know, when I say our kids, I am mindful that some families are struggling to bring kids into their lives; by our kids, I mean our community’s kids. And they are abundant. This past year, the number of children in our congregation surpassed double-chai, which is 3 times as many kids as 5 years ago. So we launched Dor Hadash, our new family education program (religious school) for families raising Jewish kids in Detroit. We are still accepting registrations for this fall, so if you know any families with young Jewish kids in Detroit, please let me know.
Last year, not a single student in Dor Hadash had 4 Jewish grandparents. So last year the parents talked about how to raise Jewish kids who go to their grandparents’ Christmas celebrations. And the kids are figuring it out. One mother told me that her son was singing “Shalom Chaverim”--a song he learned at Dor Hadash--as he was decorating his grandmother’s Christmas tree. This child’s father and grandmother are not Jewish. He is. He and kids like him are part of our Dor Hadash--our new generation. Let’s recognize that non-Jews who love Jews are helping to start a Jewish family education program to educate the next generation of Jews. And that sometimes these parents feel invisible or unwelcome. They are not all here. Let’s invite these kids and their families to our sukkot.
And as we pull up more chairs to our Sukkot table, we still need more.
This past year, Standford University, with funding from the Jim Joseph Foundation, conducted a study which determined that at least 12% of Jews are non-white, and further concluded that that number was probably an underestimate. That’s because many Jewish population studies probably undersample Jews of Color in their methodologies, and some don’t even ask about race. Including in Detroit. In the summary of our 2018 Detroit population study, over 200 pieces of data are given, in the summary alone. Not one of them is about skin color. I would like to think that’s because Jews of Color are fully considered to be Jews. But the data includes demographic minutia and what percentage of Jews in Metro Detroit give money to enumerated Jewish institutions. When we think about who counts in the Jewish community, it is important to recognize who gets counted.
So at least Stanford demographers tried to count. And they concluded that nationally at least 12% of Jews are Jews of Color. And based on demographic projections, that means that there will soon be 1 million Jews in the United States who are not white. Some of these Jews have two Jewish parents and some have one, just like white Jews. Some converted to Judaism, just like white Jews. And some can trace their Jewish genealogy back through many generations, just like white Jews.
And yet, sometimes we treat Jews like the stranger in Deuteronomy, and may not even see their absence. Ilana Kaufman, Director of the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative, pointed out during her presentation to a conference for Jewish professionals, this means that when you go to shul, in every minyan you count, there should be at least one, and probably at least two, Jews of Color. Let me repeat that. When you go to shul, in every minyan you count, there should be at least one, and probably at least two, Jews of Color. To truly reflect the demographics of the Jewish community, on the boards of synagogues and Jewish institutions, at least 12% of the board members should be Jews of Color. At high holiday services, at least 12% of the worshippers should be Jews of Color.
I am proud that over 12% of the Downtown Synagogue’s board members are Jews of Color, as are over 12% of our Dor Hadash students, and Shabbat service attendees. However, this is not true of our membership, or of the people in this room.
We need to ask why not. Marra Gad, a woman who was born to a white Jewish mother and a black father, and then adopted by a white, Jewish family, wrote a book entitled The Color of Love, that will be released in November. Because I will have the privilege of interviewing her during the Jewish Book Fair, I got to read an advance copy of the book. It is, truly, about love, and about her ability to love, even in the face of hatred and discrimination. I am inspired by her, and haunted by the stories she told.
She wrote about how she was often assumed to be “the help” at synagogue functions, how she was treated differently than her white siblings, and frequently asked to explain what makes her Jewish. She has remained actively involved in the Jewish community. Many Jews who were treated that way understandably have not.
So I invite us--all of us--to make some communal commitments, as easy or hard as they may be. Let’s not ask Jews of Color whether they converted to Judaism, or any similar question like, “so...how did you get to be Jewish?” Let’s not assume that a Person of Color is “the help” at a Jewish event, or, anywhere. Let’s not overlook a Person of Color when counting a minyan, or think twice about whether we should. Let’s not assume when we see a white Jew that no one in their extended family is a Person of Color. Chances are, someone is. Let’s make sure our sukkah table is racially diverse.
But wait! There’s more. When Deuteronomy refers to the fatherless and the widow, it is an acknowledgment of not just the pain of loss, but of the likely economic insecurity of those without a wage earner. Today we know that poverty is a reality for many, regardless of household configuration, and sometimes even with a wage earner. The Detroit Jewish population study reported that at least 600 Jewish households in Metro Detroit are living below the poverty line. And we know that when we expand to include every household in Metro Detroit, that number is staggering.
Sukkot was traditionally a pilgrimage festival when Jews were expected to bring an offering to God to express their gratitude. Our text in Deuteronomy continues,
“Three times a year—on Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot—all your males shall appear before the Eternal your God in the place that God will choose. They shall not appear before the Eternal empty-handed, (17) but each with his own gift, according to the blessing that the Eternal your God has bestowed upon you.
When we are truly cognizant of the abundance with which we have been blessed, and we understand that God is the one who has bestowed this abundance, we give some of it back. Or today, when the Temple no longer stands, I would argue that God wants us to pay it forward. Let us make Sukkot a time when we share our wealth, both through giving, and through hospitality. We need some more chairs at our sukkot table.
And not only am I inviting us to cross the lines of generations, race, and class, I am going to invite us to do something harder. I invite each of us to examine our own family and circle of friends, and try to see which elements of our beautiful abundance are missing from our tables.
Let’s invite people who identify as LGBTQ and people who don’t, people who identify as cisgender and people who are transgender, people who are able-bodied, and people who live with a disability. People born in this country, and people who were not. I could certainly keep going. I chose these examples because all of these people are represented in this room, and many of these groups are underrepresented.
Don’t get me wrong--I don’t expect any of this to be easy. In fact, nearly every year just building the sukkah is when my marriage is tested--if a beam is backwards that often means doing many steps over again and terse words are exchanged. And then, once it is done, we begin to invite guests. My generous spouse likes to cook for lots of people, and he’s very good at it. So I try to arrange the jigsaw puzzle of which guests are coming for which meals. You are all, of course, invited to come during the synagogue’s sukkah hop, and if that day doesn’t work for you, please let me know and I’m happy to fit you into the jigsaw puzzle on a different day. And I am going to make a promise to you. I am going to, as they say, practice what I preach, and make sure that over the course of Sukkot, our table reflects the diversity that may be missing from our lives.
I do not think that Sukkot will solve all of our social ills. But Sukkot reminds us that accessing joy can help us build a structure able to withstand the storm. And when people come together across lines of difference, when people celebrate the abundance of the season and the abundance of diversity in our community, when people recognize the humanity of other people, it can bring us, well, joy. I wish you an early Chag Sukkot Sameach. And a Shana Tova.