“Live in My House, I’ll Be Your Shelter” Rabbi Andrew Oberstein’s Qabbalat Shabbat Sermon, 10/10/25
Rabbi Andrew Oberstein
Qabbalat Shabbat, October 10, 2025
Chol HaMo’ed Sukkot 5786: Live in My House, I’ll Be Your Shelter
The Riverway Project // Temple Israel of Boston
Back in the spring,
I shared that I had finally,
for the first time in my life,
moved out of an apartment in the city into a house in the suburbs.
And I’m pleased to say it’s been an overwhelmingly positive experience,
barring some truly underestimated commuter traffic,
of course.
There were many reasons I felt called to leave the city and start the suburban chapter of my life,
but one reason in particular stands out.
It may seem small and insignificant,
but,
as an urban apartment dweller,
I’d never actually had the chance to build a sukkah.
After decades of visiting friends and family for Sukkot,
I had grown impatient to have a sukkah of my own.
It felt like a major piece of Jewish ritual life that had just been missing from my own personal practice.
And so when I moved into my new house in May,
I took a look at the small outdoor area in the back and said to myself,
“Come October, this is where my sukkah will go.”
Now,
I’m proud to say I’m the owner of a small but cozy sukkah.
And this week,
I experienced firsthand why this ritual still matters so deeply.
*****
On Wednesday night,
after a long rainy day,
I sat outside in the sukkah with my partner, Jacob,
bowls of homemade chili in hand, as we enjoyed dinner under the stars.
Sukkot is one of a handful of Jewish observances that truly engage the entire body.
And sitting in that little hut on a chilly night,
I felt two overwhelmingly contrasting emotions.
The first was an all-encompassing sense of vulnerability.
The cold wind blowing through,
the damp ground beneath my feet,
the darkness surrounding me —
I felt it all.
And at the same time,
I felt a strange sense of protection and shelter.
The walls added a sense of security,
the roof a feeling of comfort.
I was not flailing out in the darkness alone,
I was enveloped in a structure,
an imperfect one perhaps,
but a structure nonetheless.
*****
Vulnerable and secure at the same time.
Exposed and guarded.
Sensitive and sheltered.
All at the same time.
*****
I’ve come to believe this is the ultimate goal of Sukkot.
Sure,
the holiday commemorates the ancient pilgrimage festival to the holy Temple in Jerusalem.
And sure,
the holiday marks the end of the harvest season,
reaping the fruits of our labor and thanking God for the abundance in our lives.
And sure,
the holiday recalls the temporary dwellings of our ancestors in the wilderness.
But,
at its core,
any ritual is intended to translate a feeling into an action,
to make an emotional truth both tangible and repeatable.
And this Sukkot,
in the midst of what really seems to be the final days of this more-than-two-year-long nightmare of a war,
I felt so deeply grateful to our tradition for letting me experience something I knew to be intellectually true but needed to feel in my bones:
that we are both,
simultaneously,
deeply vulnerable,
and yet we are not flailing out in the darkness alone.
*****
The late great Rabbi Alan Lew wrote of this sensation in his seminal book,
“This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared.”
He wrote,
“So now we sit flush with the world,
in a ‘house’ that calls attention to the fact that it gives us no shelter.
[…]
This is not a house;
it is the bare outline of a house.
[…]
And it exposes the idea of a house as an illusion.
The idea of a house is that it gives us security,
shelter,
haven from the storm.
But no house can really offer us this.
No building of wood and stone can ever afford us protection from the disorder that is always lurking all around us.
No shell we put between us and the world can ever really keep us secure from it.
[…]
In the sukkah,
a house that is open to the world,
a house that freely acknowledges it cannot be the basis of our security,
we let go of this need.
The illusion of protection falls away,
and suddenly,
we are flush with our life,
feeling our life,
following our life,
doing its dance,
one step after another.”
*****
On Yom Kippur,
we come to terms intellectually with our own vulnerability,
but on Sukkot we feel it in our bones.
We put money and time and energy into building and decorating this temporary dwelling place, only to know from the beginning that we are going to tear it down in just a week’s time.
But that’s the entire point.
*******
The point of a sukkah is to remind us how little is actually in our control.
The point of a sukkah is to remind us that we are sheltered but not too sheltered, that we are exposed but not too exposed.
All at the same time.
And this year,
sitting in that small,
imperfect structure,
I couldn’t help but think of how much that tension mirrors this very moment for the Jewish people –
this moment when,
after more than two years of horror,
it seems that a cease-fire is finally in effect,
and,
God Willing,
our hostages should be coming home imminently.
It feels like we are standing on the edge of something –
not safety,
exactly.
Not yet peace,
but the trembling possibility of both.
And that feeling,
that sense of almost-security,
of fragile safety,
that is exactly what Sukkot is designed to hold.
******
A sukkah isn’t a fortress.
It’s not even a house.
It’s an act of faith –
a declaration that we are going to dwell in this house for a week even though it’s impermanent,
even though it’s not fully completed.
For two years,
we’ve carried unimaginable heartbreak.
We’ve borne witness to the trauma,
to the staggering loss,
and we have prayed every week in this community for this war to end.
And now,
maybe,
we can just begin to imagine the morning after –
a morning where the hostages are finally home safe with their families,
when the guns fall silent,
when the very first fragile steps toward rebuilding can actually begin.
*****
Sukkot reminds us that peace is not the same as security.
Peace is as delicate as the roof of a sukkah –
it’s fragile and tenuous and requires constant tending and strengthening.
But to sit beneath that roof regardless,
to believe that peace is possible,
is so profoundly Jewish.
It’s our way of saying even before we are safe,
we can start to live as though safety is coming.
We can’t wait until we no longer feel vulnerable to feel secure.
We have to experience these things at the same time.
Tonight,
as we look up through the open roof of our sukkot,
we are overcome by the fragility of this moment.
We are overcome by what may happen in the hours ahead.
We are under no illusions about how delicate and vulnerable our shelters are, which of course means we are under no illusions about how delicate and vulnerable we are.
But we step inside anyway.
Baruch Atah Adonai, haporeis sukkat shalom.
Blessed are you Adonai, the one who spreads over us a sukkah of peace.
May it cover all those who need it.
And most importantly, may it last.
And let us say Amen.