Cantor Vera's Corner
Cantor Vera's Message
October 2020
Shalom chevre,
Here we are, in 5781! Thank you to all who participated in and prepared for our High Holy Day services this year. It’s always a team effort; this time, we had an extra-deep and comprehensive team, planning and running almost entirely virtual High Holy Day services with skill and creativity. Thank you, dear community.
This month, we celebrate the festival of Sukkot. The sukkot we build are purposefully fragile—halachah, Jewish law, requires just three walls and a door, with schach (leafy branches) for the roof—but they are also meant to bring us together, to share stories and blessings and a bite to eat under the stars. This year, although we won’t hold services in person, we will still be able to sit in the sukkah and share stories. Our Temple sukkah will be up, and you and your household can sign up for a slot to come sit in the sukkah—please see elsewhere in this bulletin for details. And we are running a Temple Emanu-El Story Share. Please contact Nancy or me by Hoshanah Rabbah (October 9) to be given a prompt and paired with another congregant for an opportunity to share stories with each other. Stories give us momentum; let’s fuel up for the fall with one another’s tales.
In a discussion about sukkot, and what to do when a sukkah wall falls down (Eruvin 44a–b), the Talmud investigates the possibility of using stand-ins for a collapsed sukkah wall, to prop it up and make it kosher again: an animal, a utensil, or even a person. There is some speculation that an animal might wander away on its own, letting the sukkah crash down again, but a person and an inanimate object will both stay in their places unless a human wants them to move. The Gemara reconciles two opposing opinions on the permissibility of using a person to hold up a sukkah by differentiating between a person who “knowingly serve[s] as a wall” and one who “unknowingly serve[s] as a wall.”
During the month of Elul, we worked hard, spiritually, to remove barriers between ourselves and Hashem: regrets, mistakes, shame, diffidence. During the holiday of Sukkot, we’re invited to consider when and how we ourselves have acted, knowingly and unknowingly, as walls.
There are times when we stand firm between others and harm—danger, abuse—averting or absorbing it. There are times when we unknowingly block access to good, or stand in someone else’s light. There are the community and family and professional institutions to which we are essential, sometimes more than we know. There are systems of prejudice that, all unwitting, we help to prop up, which we don’t see properly until we step away from them.
So build your spiritual sukkah this year with care, and sit in the physical sukkot with intention. Choose what behaviors, what stories, will support a fragile but definite shelter. Leave space between branches for the stars and the outside world, the overview. Figure out where you need to stand firm, and from what you need to step back. And trust that you are not the only person holding up the sukkah. Your community is here with you. We hold each other up.
L’shalom,
Cantor Vera
Here we are, in 5781! Thank you to all who participated in and prepared for our High Holy Day services this year. It’s always a team effort; this time, we had an extra-deep and comprehensive team, planning and running almost entirely virtual High Holy Day services with skill and creativity. Thank you, dear community.
This month, we celebrate the festival of Sukkot. The sukkot we build are purposefully fragile—halachah, Jewish law, requires just three walls and a door, with schach (leafy branches) for the roof—but they are also meant to bring us together, to share stories and blessings and a bite to eat under the stars. This year, although we won’t hold services in person, we will still be able to sit in the sukkah and share stories. Our Temple sukkah will be up, and you and your household can sign up for a slot to come sit in the sukkah—please see elsewhere in this bulletin for details. And we are running a Temple Emanu-El Story Share. Please contact Nancy or me by Hoshanah Rabbah (October 9) to be given a prompt and paired with another congregant for an opportunity to share stories with each other. Stories give us momentum; let’s fuel up for the fall with one another’s tales.
In a discussion about sukkot, and what to do when a sukkah wall falls down (Eruvin 44a–b), the Talmud investigates the possibility of using stand-ins for a collapsed sukkah wall, to prop it up and make it kosher again: an animal, a utensil, or even a person. There is some speculation that an animal might wander away on its own, letting the sukkah crash down again, but a person and an inanimate object will both stay in their places unless a human wants them to move. The Gemara reconciles two opposing opinions on the permissibility of using a person to hold up a sukkah by differentiating between a person who “knowingly serve[s] as a wall” and one who “unknowingly serve[s] as a wall.”
During the month of Elul, we worked hard, spiritually, to remove barriers between ourselves and Hashem: regrets, mistakes, shame, diffidence. During the holiday of Sukkot, we’re invited to consider when and how we ourselves have acted, knowingly and unknowingly, as walls.
There are times when we stand firm between others and harm—danger, abuse—averting or absorbing it. There are times when we unknowingly block access to good, or stand in someone else’s light. There are the community and family and professional institutions to which we are essential, sometimes more than we know. There are systems of prejudice that, all unwitting, we help to prop up, which we don’t see properly until we step away from them.
So build your spiritual sukkah this year with care, and sit in the physical sukkot with intention. Choose what behaviors, what stories, will support a fragile but definite shelter. Leave space between branches for the stars and the outside world, the overview. Figure out where you need to stand firm, and from what you need to step back. And trust that you are not the only person holding up the sukkah. Your community is here with you. We hold each other up.
L’shalom,
Cantor Vera
Cantor Vera's Video Teachings
Cantor Vera's Writings
D'var for Pesach 5780/2020 (video)
"Practicing Failure, Cultivating Resilience," d'var for Yom Kippur 5780/2019
D'var for Kol Nidrei 5780/2019
"Israeli and American Jewish Identity," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5780/2019
"The Geir Without and Within," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5779/2018
"Ki Hinei Kachomeir: Desiring our Yeitzer," for Kol Nidrei 5779/2018
Cantor Vera's Report on Trip to San Diego and Tijuana with T'ruah in July 2018
"Practicing Failure, Cultivating Resilience," d'var for Yom Kippur 5780/2019
D'var for Kol Nidrei 5780/2019
"Israeli and American Jewish Identity," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5780/2019
"The Geir Without and Within," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5779/2018
"Ki Hinei Kachomeir: Desiring our Yeitzer," for Kol Nidrei 5779/2018
Cantor Vera's Report on Trip to San Diego and Tijuana with T'ruah in July 2018