Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
This year’s Sukkah holiday is overshadowed by October 7th, 2023 and its aftermath. Rabbi Arie Hasit asks us to see this as both a time of Joy and a time to Weep.
ושמחת בחגך והייתה אך שמח
ושמחת בחגך והייתה אך שמח
ON the evening of the 22nd of Tishrei, last year, October 6th, on Friday night, my community and I sang those words together over and over again.
ושמחת בחגך
“you will be happy on your holiday”
והייתה אך שמח
“and you will be even happier.”
These words come from two different verses from the book of Deuteronomy describing how we will feel on the holiday of Sukkot. In our liturgy, we read in the Musaf prayer that Sukkot is זמן שמחתנו Sukkot is “the time of our happiness.”
And yet, how much happiness will we feel in Sukkot this year?
The holidays of Tishrei are all marked by the terrible year that the Jewish People and all of Israel have had since the morning of the 22nd of Tishrei, since our Simchat Torah was replaced by a terrible, terrible atrocity.
We are living in a trauma ever since. Families in mourning and a country in war and we are waiting for, at the time of this recording, over a hundred hostages to either come home to rehabilitation or to be given proper burial.
ושמחת בחגך והייתה אך שמח
You will be happy.
How can we see Sukkot as our time of happiness?
The commentators over the years have said, in fact, that maybe this is not a command, but just a description: that we will be happy. Maybe it is actually a moderated happiness because it is a happiness of the world to come.
Maybe it is telling us to be happy because after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we don’t want to stop working. So, it is reminding us to find joy.
But I believe that this year, we are finding a contra in the liturgy in the Book of Kohelet. In the Book of Ecclesiastes, as we know, says there is a time for every purpose. To every thing there is a season. That there is a time to cry and there is a time to laugh and a time to dance.
Maybe this year we are going to read Kohelet to tell us this might be a time to cry.
But, Kohelet tells us one other thing. It says in chapter nine that people will not know what time it is just like the fish in the sea.
Maybe we will be confused this year. What we are learning this year on Sukkot, our time of happiness, that in fact there is also a lot of sadness.
This year we have an opportunity to say, it is all mixed together. We can have happiness in our holiday because what is a sukkah?
A sukkah is a reminder of how temporary things are. We can be in our sukkah this year we can feel we have a temporary home and maybe a temporary refuge.
We will go out to a world which is filled with pain and sadness and we will know that there is a time to cry and a time to be joyful. And they are mixed in.
We will also know from our sukkah, our temporary dwelling place, that this sadness will be temporary and there will then again be times for us to laugh, to smile and to dance.
Chag Sameach from Schechter
Rabbi Arie Hasit, Associate Dean, Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, was ordained by the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in 2016 and was in the second cohort of the Mishlei program. Prior, he served six years as the founding rabbi and CEO of 70 Faces — Mazkeret Batya, a unique community that promotes the values of Masorti Judaism and religious pluralism in the public sphere.
Rabbi Hasit volunteers as co-chair of the Masorti Movement’s Youth Committee and as a member of the Law Committee for the Israeli Rabbinical Assembly.
He lives in Mazkeret Batya with his wife, Sara Tova Brody and their two children.
