A Hasidic master, Sfat Emet, writes during Sukkot “this is wholeness: a person with a broken heart… and in every place that G-d dwells, there is wholeness.”
Wholeness is a person with a broken heart. Broken equals whole.
What?
This is how I understand it. A person whose heart is not broken, if even some of the time, isn’t paying attention. Someone whose heart isn’t, at least now and then, cracked open by the world’s fragility isn’t paying attention.
Sukkot is the perfect opportunity to open our hearts wide and decorate and build our fragile beings. A sukkah’s roof is flimsy and leaks, succumbing to the elements. Our bodies are like a sukkah. Life is like a sukkah. It’s wrenching, drenching and distressing when we allow ourselves to feel. But when we do stop and feel, that’s when we open our hearts to G-d; we let in compassion and wholeness. We allow ourselves to feel as we let in truth, kindness and grace.
When we allow ourselves to feel, we feel the pain, but we also feel what heals and uplifts – that which endures beyond broken pieces.
Sukkot is a time to rejoice. To me, rejoicing means authenticity – opening our hearts to both the bitter and the sweet.
This Sukkot, and in the year ahead, may we open our hearts and be blessed with upliftment and comfort to soothe every broken piece, and may that bring the strength to bring hope and courage to our fragility.
Chag Sameach!
As written for Beit Luria’s October 2022 newsletter.
Nachas & Drash 