Shemini Atzeret 5784 ~ Oct. 6, 2023

Are you ready for rain?  How about snow? It has been a wonderful week for the festival of Sukkot. I have spent a great deal of time sitting on my deck, in my sukkah enjoying the wonderful weather we have been enjoying.

A couple of strange things happened this Sukkot. The first took place during the rainstorm on the first night of Sukkot – my sukkah traveled from one end of the deck to the other. It literally slid from one side to the other. I had never actually experienced a traveling sukkah in forty years of owning one.  Was there some kind of message from nature and above, joking with me and reminding me that the Children of Israel sat in their sukkot for forty years in the wilderness as they journeyed from Egypt to the Promised Land? If there was a comic strip illustrating the sailing of my sukkah, what might the caption read? Here is what I thought: There is a picture of Moses turning to the rabbi saying: “Do you finally get it… it’s supposed to be a traveling sukkah, not one you can put away after the holiday in a box!”

Needless to say, it took me only a few minutes to realize that I had placed plastic furniture sliders under my sukkah for the past few years when I put it up on my driveway, to protect the driveway. So I slid the sukkah back in place and then removed the sliding culprits from under the poles at each corner of the metal pipe frame.

The second happened during chol ha-moed, the intermediate days of the festival. While it was summerlike conditions outside, a rarity for Sukkot in the northeast, I went inside my shed, took out my snowblower and tested it out to make sure that it started up and was running. Here it was almost eighty degrees outside and the thought of preparing for snow is clearly not anything that any rational person might be contemplating.  As the snow blower’s motor started, one person who was beginning to journey down the path beside my home to the park with his dog, abruptly changed directions. Clearly the noise of the snowblower might have been frightening to his dog, but I also wonder whether seeing someone crank up a snowblower in such beautiful weather might have also been a deterrent.

A sukkah on the deck and a snowblower running down below – most people seeing this vision would think that one of these scenes seems inappropriate for eighty-degree weather even in October.

But then again, I am a religious Jew. And as such, our religious tradition at this time reminds us that the winter season is not too far off. This Saturday morning, during services celebrating Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, we will offer prayers for Geshem, for rain in its season. Rain, in its season also includes snow, when temperatures dictate, serving as a blanket for our trees, bushes and lawns.

I am quite aware that some within our weekday evening minyan community have issues related to the second paragraph of the Shema, which I have commented upon before. However, asking that God’s and nature’s blessing provide us with appropriate rains in their season is quite important both psychologically and theologically. And it is not only for Hashem that we invoke these prayers asking for blessing, but also to remind ourselves of our responsibilities to the ecological needs of our world. 

If I am about to recite the beginning prayers for rain on Saturday as part of the Shemini Atzeret morning prayers, and include them every day in my prayers when I recite “mashiv haruach umorid hagashem,” that the winds and the rains of the winter season come upon us, then the vision of a snowblower starting up and a Sukkah above it, at least in my humble opinion, seem appropriate. Otherwise, I am reciting a beracha l’vatalah, a prayer that is in reality a non-truth and one that is just a prayer that is said in vain. My prayer is not in vain, it is in honor of rain.

I look forward to you joining us for Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah services in Colchester at 10 am on Saturday morning where we will also complete the cyclical reading of the Torah and, once again, begin reading the Torah anew from the book of Genesis. As such, we will be celebrating creation, starting over with the winds and the rains providing the necessary moisture for the dry land, so that in the spring we can plant and farm all over again, sustaining our world and the people who live in it.

Shabbat shalom and chag sa’meach.

Rabbi K