The Wondrous, Joyous Fragility of Life
Sukkot 5785
In the desert, you really gain a sense of scale. The sky above stretches and bends until it crashes into waves of sand that shimmer along the horizon. Heaven and earth meet. Is it any wonder that Revelation happened in the desert? The desert is a place of יראה , which translates both as awe and fear. It is a place where creation is on vivid display, in all of its extremes. The sun bakes down in the heat of the day, and then the temperature plummets; the moon burns cold in the dark of night. In the desert, the weather can change in an instant. Sandstorms. Flash floods. It is a place where we are forced to face our own fragility.
Five years ago, in the back of a pick-up truck making its way north through the Sinai Desert, I definitely felt fragile. We felt every rock run over, every pothole. Not only was it an uncomfortable ride, it was most definitely a dangerous one. What I wouldn’t have given for a seatbelt — or a helmet — as we were jostled around. In the end, my friends and I decided that the safest, least painful way to get through the long drive would be to lie down. We talked and laughed, recalling the fresh fish we ate in a chusha along the shores of the Red Sea, remembering the living fish we saw as we snorkeled among the coral reef. But as the sun descended, we fell quiet. The sky erupted into color, pinks and oranges. And then the twilight began to creep in. It was Sukkot. And we were staring at the same sky that our ancestors saw on their own journey north, through the very same desert, as they made their way to the Promised Land…
