By Rabbi Rebecca Birk

I began this week attending a Citizens UK event, along with Cantor Zoe Jacobs, Rabbi Sybil Sheridan and others from our community, titled Building Trust across difference: a civil society summit.

We began by reading the letter that Manchester Citizens had written and delivered to Rabbi Daniel Walker at the vigil last Friday.

What an antidote to hatred and division: a room of 150 leaders with the Minister for Communities, Faith and Devolution, Miatta Fahnbulleh. It was the right place to be and to hear such expressions of love and support from so many in the public square for the Jewish community and the Muslim community of Peacehaven Mosque. All of us committed to diversity.

Along with the many supportive messages I received last week, this was heartwarming. We are all reeling after such a distressing Yom Kippur and our hearts and solidarity are very much with the Manchester Jewish community, and particularly those in the Heaton Park congregation and our Progressive sister communities who were evacuated during the day.

So emerging from Yom Kippur into the physicality of the Sukkah has been intense as we tumble into this festival of openness and outdoor impermanence. The sukkah we build is the most flimsy of structures, reminding us of our vulnerability and frailty. How apt this feels this year.

Truthfully, I think about the sukkah every Shabbat when we offer the Hashkiveinu prayer. We pray for a Sukkot Shalom that will protect from famine, war, illness, distress and even wrongdoing. It’s like a double negative because we all know the fragile structure of the Sukkah can protect from very little materially. We see the stars through the skhach roof (greenery) and its walls are insubstantial too.

Sukkot feels like a blessing and a challenge this year, particularly for us, as we have had to be creative at FPS, with no access to our building yet. Feeling vulnerable is in our DNA, as is the expectation we remain outward focused and ready to welcome guests. Always. So being in the Sukkah is doubly important.

We will be careful, responsible and cautious about security and protecting each other. And we will work just as hard to open the sukkah doors, real and metaphorical, at a time when instinct may suggest otherwise.

It’s always a little challenging that Sukkot literally commands joy. It doesn’t suggest it, the festival is called zman simchateinu – season of our joy. What an interesting tension to hold this week. Yet it’s right here in our tradition. We lean in to joy when we may least feel like it. And we invite guests into the sukkah when our instinct might be to close down a little. Because we will continue to reach for joy, gratitude and connections.

It would be easy to despair of everything right now – and understandable. Sukkot’s scroll of Ecclesiastes and the cynicism of its first chapter reminds us how understandable that might be.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”

I reject such cynicism and lean into the joy we are obliged to seek, relishing the fresh air, the greenery, the sheer audacity of this outdoor festival. I am choosing the poet Nikita Gill’s words to speak to Ecclesiastes. These past few days, anniversary of October 7th and the hope of this morning’s peace deal:

Everything is on fire,
but everyone I love is doing beautiful things
and trying to make life worth living,
and I know I don’t have to believe in everything,
but I believe in that.

May the memories of all who have lost their lives in violence be for a blessing and a radical commitment for peace. May we stand with those who are actively working for justice and seeking connections, courage and solidarity. Joy may be here.

We’ll read these verses of Torah this Shabbat Chol Hamoed, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Eternal, in your presence.” These deeply comforting words are what we take into our sukkah this year. They are powerful promises to internalise as we build resilience and maintain hope.

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