On fragility and resilience

The inherent fragility of the sukkah is a potent symbol every year. No matter how safe we think we are, no matter how well dug in, no matter how accepted, no matter how secure, life always is fragile.

That’s true for everyone, and as we’re being reminded again and again during these last few years, and particularly during this one that’s just ended, it’s even more true for Jews.

And oh is our world fragile this year.

October 7 happened just as Sukkot ended last year. It upended our feelings about the sukkah as a metaphor by turning it into reality.

That’s what makes the cover story even more timely this week. It’s about home, about finding home, about helping other people find home.

The Jewish Community Housing Corporation helps elderly Jews living on low incomes to find homes. It also provides housing for middle- and higher-income Jews, as well as memory care for people who need it, and those are very important things, but it is unusual in its care for the not-quite-poor.

Homes matter. Home matters. Now that we know that even the most seemingly secure home is not impregnable, we should use that knowledge to help us understand how deeply precious home is.

After Sukkot ends, we will take down those flimsy structures and store them away for another year, but our understanding of the deep truth of them, not only in the distant past, not only at the edges of living memory, but here and now, should help us help other people to find their own ways home.

One of the things that we Jews have been able to do is keep going. That is a skill that we must dust off and refine.

We wish all of our readers a chag sameach. Next week is Simchat Torah, and we hope that then, despite everything, we will keep dancing.

—JP