Page 12 - Harlem Sukkot Companion 2020

Time, Space, and Sukkot
By Eden Sidney Foster, Member of Harlem Havruta

The Jewish calendar invites us into a relationship with
sacred time. As the movement of weeks becomes the
movement of seasons, our festivals and celebrations
and laments arrive and recede. We are held in our grief
and our joy, nourished and reminded. We have
expectations of time and time has expectations of us.

As with all sacred relationships in our tradition,
whether it is with text, with one another, or with G-d,
we are called to reciprocate, not simply to receive. Our
relationships are relationships, they are active and
covenantal. Time meets us again and again and, in turn, we are asked to show up in
our full selves. With our strength, our brokenness, and our love. With our words
and our actions.

This year, in particular, I am wondering how I will “show up”. Show up for my
community, show up for my neighborhood, show up for justice, show up for myself,
show up for G-d. What does showing up for our sacred commitments look like at
this time when honoring our covenant often means staying home?

These questions feel especially urgent when thinking about Sukkot. A holiday that,
maybe more than any other, is about arriving in physical space. We are obligated
to dwell in our Sukkot. We build a temporary structure that eternally welcomes all.
We perform ritual choreography with sacred plants as our tools and our voices as
our instruments. We take up space and offer it on the altar for the sake of
transformation.

Since 2017 Harlem Havruta has erected a sukkah in the garden at St Mary’s
Episcopal Church on west 126th street. A radically welcoming space, within a
radically welcoming church, that centers the marginalized and fights for the
disenfranchised. All in the holy neighborhood of Harlem.

I don’t know what our experience will look like this year. But I know that sacred
Jewish time, as it always has and always will, is both comforting us and obligating
us. It is urging us to respond.

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