Shanah Tovah! I want to take this moment to thank everyone who worked so hard to make the High Holiday Services and meals happen at KI, and a very special thank you to our guest cantor, Rabbi Ari Weber, who came up from Berkeley for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It was beautiful to daven together with all of you.

Of course, no sooner does Yom Kippur end, then we start thinking about Sukkot. Thank God, we have many opportunities to celebrate Sukkot here at KI. There is a communal sit-down luncheon the second day of Sukkot (see details below), and a barbecue party in the Sukkah Motsei Shabbat on October 22. I encourage everyone to R.S.V.P. and come to these events, but I also invite you to come just “hang out” in the Sukkah during the holiday.

One of the mysteries of the Jewish calendar is why the holiday of Sukkot, which commemorates the booths we dwelt in the wilderness when we left Egypt, happens in the fall. After all, we left Egypt in the spring, at Pesach time. Shouldn’t Sukkot then also happen in the spring, after Pesach?

There are many answers proposed to this question. I think one important benefit to Sukkot happening when it does is that it is an opportunity to solidify the teshuvah we have been doing over Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

After the intense period of prayer and teshuvah from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, davening for forgiveness, promising ourselves and God that we are going to change, become better people, we walk out of out of Shul after Neilah feeling like new people, cleansed and purified by the holiday. It can be dismaying to discover when we get home that we are still the same people we were before the holiday, how easy it is to fall back into the same old patterns as soon as the fast is over.

Sukkot comes along and invites us to move out of our houses and move into a temporary dwelling structure. During this holiday we are supposed to treat our permanent home as temporary and to treat the Sukkah, a temporary home as permanent, eating all our meals there and even sleeping there (weather permitting). By postponing our return to routine, Sukkot offers us a chance to practice being the new people became on Yom Kippur, outside the influence of familiar surroundings. Habit is a powerful force, and it’s so natural to respond to familiar surroundings and familiar routines with the same familiar behaviors. Sukkot gives us another week to practice being the new people we’ve promised God and ourselves that we would become in fresh surroundings before we face the challenge of being those people in our old familiar contexts.

The more we really do dwell in our Sukkah, the more chance we have to integrate our teshuvah and make it the new normal. I encourage everyone who doesn’t have a Sukkah of his or her own come use the KI Sukkah any time during the holiday to do some learning, have a picnic, or just sit and have a cup of tea and contemplate how you’d like to be different when you do move back into your house.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach!

Rabbi Garth Silberstein