The Sukkah of Peace

This article was originally published on Beliefnet in October, 2000.

As I'm writing this, there is news of war in the Land of Israel. My friend and dialogue partner, Hassan Khader, a Palestinian writer, lives in Ramallah, where two Israeli soldiers were brutally killed and where Israeli rockets have retaliated.

The cycle of violence goes on and on, and it is so easy for each side to point the finger of blame. All we have to do is start the story where we want to start it: He hurt me, he abused me, and therefore I must hurt and abuse him. Both sides can speak this way, and both will be right, and the cycle goes on and on.

How do we escape the cycle of violence? There is no way at the level of right and wrong, of blame and counter-blame. There is plenty of blame to go around--and around and around. The only way out is at the level of spirit. Peace is not only a political concept, peace is ultimately spiritual, peace is invisible, peace is fragile. That is why I find so much meaning in the phrase we read in the siddur, Jewish prayer book, when we pray that God will spread a "sukkah of peace over Israel and over all the world." (A sukkah is, literally, the temporary huts that Jews use to observe the holiday of Sukkot, the Festival of Booths.)

Boy, do we need that sukkah of peace right now. How can we help build it?

A sukkah is fragile, a flimsy hut. In a good sukkah, the walls shake a little when the wind blows, and the stars can be seen through the spaces between the branches or fronds we lay on the roof. So why a sukkah of peace? Surely if God wants to protect us, we should have an iron shield of peace, or a stone arch of peace. But no, it is a sukkah.

In time of fear, right now, we would love to have that steel shield, that concrete overhead. And who among us would trust something as flimsy as a sukkah to protect us from the violence of the world, the hatred and anger, and the feelings of revenge that are welling up on both sides in the Land of Israel right now?

Yet in the festival of Sukkot, Jews go outside precisely to expose themselves to the elements, for the mitzvah, commandment, is to "dwell" in the sukkah: to eat there, pray there, and sleep there. Because the sukkah of peace is not made of armor or steel, or anything material--it is made of faith, and it is as flimsy in appearance as a cloud.

The sukkah is said to be a harvest hut, but it is also a reminder of the sukkahs God provided the children of Israel for the exodus from Egypt. Yet there is a dispute among rabbinic interpreters: Were these really booths, or were the "sukkahs" actually the clouds of glory, clouds of divine protection. Maybe the answer is that the most exquisite sukkah of protection and peace is nothing material, it is no more than a cloud to our eyes, yet it is protection enough. We read in the Psalms, "And if God does not build the house, then those who build it work for naught" (Psalm 127:1).

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