Mental health and the world’s sukkah moment - opinion
The festival of Sukkot provides a
path forward to people of conflicting political ideologies to agree on
the sanctity of nature without making it into a political football.
By SHMULEY BOTEACH
The Stanleigh family sit inside their sukka, or
ritual booth, used during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot in their yard, in Jerusalem October 14, 2019. Picture taken October 14, 2019.
(photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)
The weather this summer in New Jersey has been insane.
Few doubt that the climate is changing, even as political partisanship seems to determine whether you believe this is man-made or natural.Oh, how I wish we in America could agree on something, anything!But the festival of Sukkot
provides a path forward to people of conflicting political ideologies
to agree on the sanctity of nature without making it into a political
football.
The Jewish faith has long been connected to natural settings, even as religious Jews have wrongly been associated with urban sprawl. We need not go all the way back to the wanderings of Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness to make the point.More
recently, the great Jewish mystics like Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Ari,
dwelled in the wooded North of Israel in Safed. In communing with nature
they found God. And why would one think otherwise? Michelangelo said it
best: “My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through
Earth’s loveliness.”Sukkot
is the supreme Jewish moment when nature connect us with the divine. As
humanity becomes more reliant on the sturdiness of permanent
structures, the possibility of hubris ensues. Preempting naturalist
thinkers like Rousseau, the Torah was profoundly concerned that people
should not become so consumed by their own creations that we become
desensitized to the beauty of nature.Thus
there are laws that govern the building of cities, ensuring that they
never grow to become concrete jungles, where people can no longer see
green grass or flowers in bloom. The Torah spells out how all the Levite
cities were to look. There was to be a double surround to each town.
First a green belt of 1,000 cubits, and exterior to that, a
2,000-cubit-wide belt for “fields and vineyards” (Num. 35:2–5).Although
some exegetes maintain that the 1,000-cubit band was for pasture, Rashi
explains that it was not for use, but “for the beauty of the town, to
give it space.” Maimonides reflects this idea by legislating that there
be a certain distance between trees and residences, and that a strict
proportion of each be maintained so that residences are not constructed
to the detriment of the environment.
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And why is it so critical to be touched by
nature? Behind their strong wooden doors, surrounded by their strong
brick walls, humans feels invincible and impregnable. We feel immune
from danger as we relax in man-made abodes.But
all that security is insubstantial and easily lost, as we’ve all
discovered through the pandemic. By embracing vulnerability we remove
the protective layers and artificial barriers that wall us off from one
another and from God.Once
a year, a husband must take his wife into his mud hut. So many men want
to show women that they are kings who live in castles. They relate to
women through shining body armor. They misguidedly believe that only
strength and honor are to be respected. Confessing fault or
acknowledging insecurity is to be disdained.So
men especially hide their emotions and never speak of their fears.
They’re strong and invulnerable and have no trepidation or fright.But
a wife also wants to know that her husband needs her, relies on her,
confides in her, confesses to her. She wants to meet him not in the
sturdy castle but in the open sukkah. Husband and wives grow closer when
they are out of their protective enclosures and dependency.Humanity
must experience and express emotional vulnerability. A man and a woman
fall in love with each other when they get emotionally naked. For that
to happen, we must sometimes expose the leaks in our hearts and the
cracks in our egos.The world is finally experiencing its sukkah moment. Simone Biles rejected a citadel made of gold for a sukkah made of emotion. Naomi Osaka and Michael Phelps came and added branches.Dwelling
in a sukkah is no longer stigmatized. Admitting that you are human and
frail is no longer seen as pathetic but strong, not weak but courageous.
Fear of confessing vulnerability is a manifestation of true insecurity.What
a shame it has taken this long. How many generations of men were lost
because they were told that only sissies feel? How many generations of
women felt condemned because they were not supposed to show cracks?In
2008 I published my book The Broken American Male where I argued that a
culture that falsely teaches men to project invulnerability is causing
them to crack under the strain of an increasingly toxic masculinity.I want to segue back to nature.I
feel most alive when I am in the outdoors. I love nothing more than
being on a bike or on a hike and watching a beautiful sunset. And I love
traversing America in an RV. I took our family to five national parks
this summer where we camped, walked and rode.Which is why I want to end with a plea to our elected officials.In
the entire northeastern United States there is only one National park,
Acadia in Maine. Can you imagine? Utah has five national parks. Alaska
has eight. California has the most, with nine.But
in all of New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, etc.
there is only one, in Maine. That’s nuts. There is so much beauty. Why
hasn’t the government given us more national parks?West
Virginia just got a national park, the New River Gorge. I can see the
Delaware Water Gap of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the Adirondacks of
New York, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the White Mountains of New
Hampshire all becoming national parks. Or even just one of them! If
only Congress would make it so.The world is becoming more sukkah-friendly. Not just seven days of the year but all year long.Happy Sukkot.The
writer, “America’s Rabbi,” is the author most recently of Holocaust
Holiday: One Family’s Descent into Genocide Memory Hell. Follow him on
Twitter and Instagram @RabbiShmuley.
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