I just really like that title.
My friend is on a sabbatical of sorts in Eretz Yisroel and she sent me pictures of the utterly charming succah on her mirpeset in Yerushalayim. I couldn’t believe that she had her own succah! I asked how that came to be. She shared that it had been a process. She davened for a succah. She really wanted one. Then her cousin built the frame. And helped her buy schach (such beautiful schach by the way, it makes the succah look like a tropical hut in the best way). Then her landlord added a beam and hung a curtain to make a wall. Then my friend decorated it with tinsel garlands, paper chains, and fruit vines.
I just love the pictures of my friend’s succah. She told me that she felt so loved this week. And I remembered that a succah is supposed to make us feel loved.
The beginning of this year was very hard for my family. And we also had a simcha. A week after my cousin’s levaya, another cousin got engaged. My cousin (yet another one!) wrote a beautiful message on our family chat about how we will always dearly miss the cousin we lost and he will be with us at every simcha, and at the same time, Koheles says, “eis livchos v’eis lis’chok eis sifod v’eis rikod.” He wrote that these two things can coexist as much as they seem to contradict each other.
Life can be very painful but Succos is Zman Simchaseinu. Both can be true. Let’s feel the love be”H!
Wishing you a wonderful Y”T!