| Sukkot & Simchat Torah 5761 (2000) |
Love, Marriage and Hakafot
"I love my wife," said Berl. "That's why I do everything she
asks me to do. She says, 'Berl, please take out the garbage,' and right away, I
take out the garbage."
We all agreed that Berl loves his wife.
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| THE PARSHAH IN A NUTSHELL |
Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah
 Appointments and pilgrimages, visions and blessings, endings and beginnings,
awesome things and the geography of time, as the annual Torah reading draws to a
close and immediately begins anew.
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The Women's Balcony
 A sudden bitter irritation twisted inside me. This husband, this rabbi of
hers, better prove women weren't second-class citizens, after all, in this whole
system. And Heaven help him if he couldn't give me an answer, pronto.
"I want to know why the women aren't allowed to dance with the men.
" My anger sounded to my own ears flat, bold, the way I wanted it.
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| FROM THE CHASSIDIC MASTERS |
The Willow
In addition to the willow branch (aravah) taken with the ethrog, palm frond and myrtle as the "Four Kinds", there is another Sukkot observance, involving just the willow, conducted on seventh day of Sukkot.
The aravah represents the quality of simplicity. And there are two aravot because there are two brands of simplicity: The aravah that enriches and is enriched by its connection with the other "kinds"; and the aravah whose pristine simplicity we zealously preserve, lest it be clouded by association with its sophisticated brethren.
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Bubble Gum
Lunch break comes, and it is too cold to play outside. My students gather by
the window. They too will witness the mass murder of hundreds of colorful gum balls.
Keeping kosher to these kids means no gum balls. Now, finally, someone who
cares, someone named Yefim, has gotten them kosher gum from America. And now
this? Where is justice? Where is G-d?
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Souls in the Rain
 When the bride and groom exit their private yichud room, the party
begins. From Yom Kippur we leap into Sukkot, which celebrates the marriage of
G-d and His people.
Then comes the zenith of the High Holiday season: Shemini Atzeret and Simchat
Torah, described in the Kabbalah as the "time of intimacy with the
Divine." That's why we recite special prayers for rain on the festival of
Shemini Atzeret. What is rain? In the intimacy between heaven and earth,
procreative drops from heaven are absorbed and nurtured by mother-earth, which
in time will give birth to its children.
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"We have it on tradition that Moshe Rabbenu sent messengers on clouds to this part of the world to get these special fruits," explains Rabbi Lazar. "Out of the thousands of esrogim growing in each of the orchards of Calibria you find only a few hundred that are really acceptable for Sukkot."
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