Mental health, vulnerability: A sukkah moment

• Published date: 28 September 2021
• Author: SHMULEY BOTEACH

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 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 connects 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.

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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 explained that it was not for use, but "for the beauty of the town, to give it space." Maimonides further 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.

And why is it so critical to be touched by nature? Behind their strong wooden doors, surrounded by their strong brick walls, humans feel 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...