kosher bookworm: alan jay gerber

Some suggestion for Sukkot-time readings

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With Sukkot just around the corner, here is my list of some fine readings for your consideration during the upcoming feast.

 

From “Torah TO-GO Sukkot 5775,” there’s the lead article titled “Ushpizin: Our Sukklah Guests,” by Rabbi Reuven Brand.

While we all invite these legendary unseen guests in our sukkas each year, do we ready understand the meanings and purposes behind this ritual? Brand helps us better comprehend its “deeper” meaning. He teaches us that, “Whatever one’s specific practice regarding the tradition of ushpizin, the concept is profound and relevant. Whenever one contemplates the specific middah of a specific spiritual guest on a given day, or studies the relationship between this guest and the holiday of Sukkot in general, ushpizin can help connect us with a more meaningful experience of the mitzvah of Sukkah specifically, and our relationship with G-d in general.”

The ushpizin is also a focus in an essay titled “Sukkot: A Guide for Understanding and Celebrating,” by Noam Zion of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Zion notes the origins of this ritual going as far back to the Zohar which “makes explicit, one may not seek to enhance the spiritual aspect of our Sukkah meal without also inviting human guests, the poor, for ethics and spirituality are intertwined. Hachnasat orchim, hospitality, is an essential part of festival meals, and from the Latin term ‘hospice’ comes the Aramaic term for guest — ushpizin.”

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