It’s all about the Schach
Rabbi David Paskin
The High Holidays and Sukkot
are in the same month of Tishrei,
just about back to back, and seem to be connected. But what's the connection
between the solemn Days of Awe and the joy of Sukkot?
The primary symbol of Rosh
Hashanah is the shofar.
Traditionally, the procedure of blowing the shofar
consists of 100 blasts: 60 tekiah
blasts, 20 shevarim blasts, and 20 teruah blasts. Gematria is the study of Hebrew letters and their numerical values.
According to gematria the Hebrew
letter for 60, the number of tekiah blasts, is samech and the Hebrew
letter for 20, the number of both shevarim
and teruah blasts, is chaf. These letters: Samech, chaf, chaf spell the word - S’chach, which is the Hebrew word for
the covering we place on our sukkah.
In our Rosh Hashanah shofar blasts we have a hint of the
upcoming harvest festival of Sukkot.
But what about Yom Kippur?
The primary service of Yom
Kippur in the Tabernacle (and the Holy Temple) was the incense offering,
which produced a cloud of smoke known as the “cloud of incense.”
He will take a pan-full of glowing
charcoals of fire from the side of altar facing God, and two handfuls of
incense of fine fragrant spices, and he will bring them into the curtained
enclosure. And he shall put the incense upon the fire before Hashem, that the cloud of the incense may cover the
kaporet that is upon the testimony, so that he should not die. (Leviticus
16:12-13)
According to some, this cloud of incense was the source for the
“clouds of glory” that surrounded and protected the Jews in the desert.
Then the cloud covered the tent of
meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses was not able to
enter the tent of meeting because the cloud
had settled on it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. (Exodus
40:34)
According to the Tosefta, Aaron, the High Priest who offered
the cloud of incense on Yom Kippur,
was also the source for the clouds of glory as it says, “As long as Aaron was
alive, the pillar of cloud led
Israel.” (Tosefta, Sota, 11:1)
These “clouds” are also pointing us toward Sukkot. In the book of Leviticus we learn:
You shall dwell in booths seven days;
all that are home born in Israel shall dwell in booths: that your generations
may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them
out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 23:42-43)
The sages of the Talmud discuss what these “booths” are meant
to remind us of:
They were clouds of glory; these are
the words of Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Akiva says: They made themselves actual
booths. (Sukkah 11b)
When we build a sukkah
and cover it with schach, we are
remembering both the actual sukkot in
which our ancestors actually lived and the clouds of glory that we merited
because of Aaron and the cloud of incense that he offered on Yom Kippur.
Both Rosh Hashanah
and Yom Kippur have hints of Sukkot within them. The blasts on Rosh Hashanah and the cloud from the Yom Kippur offering both remind us of
the sukkah and the schach that covers it.
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are ethereal, personal
moments in the Jewish calendar. They are holidays of the soul and spirit; times
for reflection, prayer and introspection. We look to the heavens for
forgiveness and seek to understand and deepen our relationship with God.
Sukkot, on the other
hand, is one of the most physical, interactive, earthly holidays. It is one of
the three pilgrimage festivals when whole communities would travel together to
Jerusalem. Today, we build a sukkah
and invite all of our friends and family to join us in festive meals,
sleepovers and celebration. We literally take up the harvest in our hands and
shake them in every direction. We cover ourselves in nature under the schach and re-connect to our roots.
The schach, which has
to give us enough protection to keep us dry during a light rain but also must
be open enough so we can see the stars, links the earthly with the ethereal.
From inside our sukkah, with the
plenty of the harvest literally in our hands, we look up to the heavens and
remember that we are more than physical beings. Our schach, that reminds us of the sanctity of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
and the physicality of Sukkot, is the
bridge between heaven and earth - between the Yamim Noraim and Sukkot.
The schach is where heaven and earth
touch.
