Dear friends:
I hope this message finds you well and is received in the spirit of which it is offered. I’d like to speak to the jewish perspective on impermanence, specifically because Succot begins tomorrow night and offers us a fresh view of life and the celebration of it.
Impermanence means that not all things are meant to last. From the homes we build to the relationships that were built in and around our homes, loss and the challenge of rebuilding from loss is often our greatest task. Understanding impermanence helps us grow into the task of rebuilding from loss and the upcoming Sukkot holiday helps us do so.
Throughout the test of time when Jews walked the desert in search of the promised land, they took one week each year to rejoice in the holiday of Succot. The holiday starts five days after Yom Kippur and is celebrated for seven days. Jews build Succah’s, which are temporary dwelling huts. They “eat, pray and love” inside the Succah and it’s a week long celebration of life filled with ritual and depth.
When my children were young and we were practicing orthodoxy, we always built a Succah. We gave thanks to God through celebratory meals, customs and prayer and mostly loved the experience. One year we decided to build our Succah was in the back yard. That year the lawn had not been mowed fresh so I put a tarp down as a “floor”. That year it frequently rained and I found myself standing still in the water while attempting to mop it up to avoid the trouble of mosquitoes and such. Needless to say, I knew the week would fly by so I mopped with humility knowing knats and mosquitos would be flying around us as we “celebrated”.
Sometimes life feels slow, like the stillness of standing water and sometimes it flies by fast with waves of excitement. My marriage did not fly by, my marriage was long and hard. During my marriage duration I learned to pray hard and I learned how to cultivate stillness within. Due to the troubles of my marriage, impermanence was inevitable. What’s been inscribed within me since my marriage ended is a deep understanding of our shared universal wandering.
All of humanity experiences this wandering from the truth in one way or another and each of us suffer in our own way, to deal with “it”. We may not be aware of “it”, for as they say “ignorance is bliss”. But when we do awaken to greater meaning, a sense of responsibility is awakened along with it. The great redeemer of the Jewish people known as Moshiach, is supposed to reveal his essence unto the “peoples of the land” when all are awakened. I choose to believe that Moshiach is patiently witnessing and watching closely as We the People process such.
We the People are being witnessed in our holy divide. Whether we are democrat or republican; orthodox, conservative, reform, etc., we are stimulating an awakening by elevating the problem through name calling and pointing fingers at the other. With this dilemma, the weak are falling into depression, substance abuse and other forms of self-sabotage to deal with the problems. Some don’t even realize the escalation is happening and some may die before waking from their drunken stupor. Whether we see the bigger picture or not, all is universally interconnected and all are universally effected by this energy.
We need to be kinder to one another during these trying times. In my early trying times, I worked hard to achieve a peaceful resolve from within. I’ve since learned the importance of the resolve was so I didn’t put my problems on others. This is one gift my father, of blessed memory, taught me.
My father taught me peace but he didn’t spell it out, he acted as such. I never witnessed my father as the strict and feared Police Lieutenant that his subordinates witnessed and revered. At home, he wanted peace, love and safety and at home he made that happen.
Peace is fleeting in nature and f you’re not practiced in stillness, peace is even more fleeting. Peace teaches us how to deal with impermanence because of it’s fleeting nature. I am not aligned with any denomination of Judaism or a political movement because the actions of the whole are un-peacefully divided. I have learned to offer the divide a blessing of unity and go about my business, being present in the middle of it all. Thirty plus years of yoga and meditation have helped significantly. Om Shalom 🙂
Seeing the potential good in people is what brings me greater peace and hence forth, enables me to celebrate impermanence. To complete the thought of this message, I hope you can celebrate the meaning of the holiday of Succot in one fashion or another. I hope you can be each other’s sacred witness through the highs and lows of life because it’s a privilege to do so. It’s also crucial to the awakening of life and to the revealing of the Moshiach. May each of us find merit and goodness during the days of Succot and beyond.
Good Yom Tov.
Rabbi Melinda “Bracha” Bernstein
(954) 901-1355
PS: The photo of me in the header is from 2009. I have since released both geode and polished rose quartz, (signifying the rough edges and smoothness of love) unto others to cherish. Nevertheless, the energy of love is a balancing act and so too, is impermanence 😉
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