"Time" to Get Outside

Yom Kippur is our existential "time out" from worldly engagement, a time where we are encouraged to head inside in the direction of our deepest selves. A wide-ranging series of symbols, all pointing toward a central motif of inwardness, sets the stage for an ambiance characterized by an inner-centric chic. The sea and its raging depths are used frequently in Kabbalah to convey a sense of robust interior; the vast array of aquatic organisms concealed beneath the ocean's surface lends itself to that parallel. The belly of the whale continues in the same vein, as does the iconic imagery of the inner sanctum of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, the most sublime earthly concentration of G-dly energy, where the hidden infinite light of Ein Sof manifests in a place designed for concealment, the holy of holies as extreme irony, where concealment is the only avenue for revelation. Only in the shadows can that which must remain unknown be known.

The High Priest, acting on our behalf, is the communal envoy who ventures into the hidden depths, navigating the liminal space between life and death, with the objective of us mimicking that very journey inward, to our own innermost human precincts, the Holy of Holies that houses our core soul life source. The Kohen Gadol, and our own inner mini personal Kohen Gadol, are like Silas in Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book," the guardian of "Bod," the human child who is raised in a cemetery by a whole community of ghosts—who announces that "it takes a graveyard to raise a child," and it's still "unsafe for him to leave the safety of the cemetery."

That being the case, Sukkot is also better understood in the light of the story's end, when Silas determines that he is ready to leave the safety of the inner world of the graveyard and enter the real world on the "outside." Sukkot is the moment Bod says goodbye to his "mother," and when she asks him, "What are you going to do?" he answers, "I'm going to see the world, get into trouble, get out of trouble again. Visit jungles and volcanoes, and deserts and islands. And people. I want to meet an awful lot of people." "Mistress Owens made no immediate reply. She stared up at him and then began to sing a song that Bod remembered, a song she used to sing to lull him to sleep when he was a child."

"Sleep my little baby-oh

Sleep until you waken, When you wake you'll see the world, If I'm not mistaken ..."

"Kiss your loved ones, Dance a measure, Find your name

And buried treasure ..."

"face your life

It's pain, it's pleasure, Leave no path un-taken"

This is the heart of Sukkot. The realization that the world of Yom Kippur is temporary; the time for wearing our shrouds and living among the angels and the dead must always come to an end.

"The midsummer sky was already beginning to lighten in the east, and that was the way Bod began to walk: down the hill, towards the living people, and the city, and the dawn. There was a smile dancing on his lips, although it was a wary smile for the world is a bigger place than a little graveyard on a hill; and there would be dangers in it and mysteries, mistakes to be made and many paths to be walked ...but between now and then, there was Life; and Bod walked into it with his eyes and his heart open."