Keeping our spirits up at Sukkot: editorial

Hard upon that late-summer heat wave, the first chilly nights of autumn have arrived. And for us Jews, that means hauling out the ol' toolbox and building ourselves a sukkah (or hanging out a while in the synagogue sukkah).

The happy holiday of Sukkot, sometimes called the Season of Our Rejoicing, follows the solemnity of Yom Kippur. In this weeklong festival, which begins sundown Wednesday, Sept. 29, we celebrate both the traditional fall harvest and mark the end of the Israelites' 40-year sojourn in the desert. And we do it by building sukkahs, or temporary "booths," like those our ancestors dwelled in back in the day.

We are actually commanded to live in the sukkah for the entire week. Most folks don't do this. After all, it can be difficult to forgo -- even for a short time -- the amenities of modern life we have come to depend on every day.

Yet there it is in Leviticus 23:33. Sukkot is one more institutional reminder that life is fragile and temporal.

As if we need any reminding these days.

Like jumbo jets idling on a runway, a long line of deadly hurricanes continues to smash into our over-battered shores. The tragedy of Iraq plays out in a daily tableau of increasingly ghoulish horror. Our beloved Israel faces ever more insidious threats. And that constant low-grade fear of another terrorist attack here is always on our minds like discordant background music.

Not that we should give in to despair. Everyone agrees we have a very important election coming up, and Americans of every political persuasion will have a chance to strike a blow against terminal cynicism by casting ballots this November. Because Jews vote in disproportionately high numbers compared with other ethnic groups, we will once again play a key role in American participatory democracy.

And while the destruction wreaked by the 2004 storms may have left our fellow citizens dazed, there is no doubt the people will rebuild.

So, with our own spirits renewed from the Days of Awe, we build our sukkahs. We build them open to the elements, using living materials like palm fronds, stalks and reeds. We lovingly decorate them as if they were meant to last a lifetime. True, if the weather turns, then rain will surely fall on us through the roof of the sukkah.

But oh, the genius of our Torah. We are also commanded on Sukkot to construct our temporary booth so that, dwelling in it, we may look up and see the stars.

Our Sukkot wish to the Jewish community this year is that we all look up, despite any cold or inclement weather, and fix our gaze upon the stars.