The legally minded Talmudic Sages, and all the commentators who interpreted their teachings, had a field day with the laws for building a Sukkah. They discussed and discerned details about every aspect of this temporary structure that we treat as if it were our permanent home for seven days, while we relate to our solid, weather-proofed, comfortable homes as merely temporary. They debated about the size of the sukkah, where it can and can’t be built, what its walls can be made of and how many are necessary. And the leafy-roofed schach, the most important and distinct part of the sukkah, garnered particularly detailed attention.

This year I learned a marvellous new detail about the schach. Talmud Sukkah 12a quotes the biblical verse׃ “After the ingathering from your threshing floor and your winepress, you shall hold the Festival of Sukkot for seven days” (Deuteronomy 16:13). The Sages of the Talmud interpret this verse to mean that after pressing the juice from the grapes you’ve harvested and threshing and winnowing the grain from their stalks, you are to take the husks, the bare vines and dry stalks and use them, use these empty leftovers, to grace the roof of your sukkah. 

This seems like such a contradiction to the general practice of hiddur mitzvah – adding beauty to each mitzvah we do. The other aspects of Sukkot are certainly oriented toward hiddur, like choosing the most beautiful etrog you can find, gathering in the gorgeous abundance of the harvest, decorating your sukkah and adorning yourself with joy – our hearts and faces shining with gladness. And yet, we use organic garbage for the schach.  

In Sod Yesharim, Sukkot 1:4, Rabbi Gershon Chanoch Henoch Leiner of Radzyn (1839-1890, a Hasidic rebbe of the Izhbitza-Radzin dynasty) teaches about the spiritual significance of this holy refuse.

He notes that what we regard as waste is actually the essential kelipah/the outer husk that protects the fruit. Under the schach made of kelipot, the sukkah protects us. There must be enough schach to create more shade in the sukkah than sun. It protects us from wind and light rain. And while our homes of brick and steel also protect us, when we are in them, the elements are concealed from us. Only in the permeable sukkah, where we are still exposed to the elements and feel them on our skin, do we experience a direct felt sense of refuge, simultaneously feeling both vulnerable and protected.

And it is through this embodied experience of physical protection that we let our hearts and awareness fall open to the underlying spiritual protection that is ever-present. The kelipot above our heads aren’t merely metaphor. In Hasidic understanding, everything in the physical world is the outer garb of divine Presence. Used and empty husks are as much expressions of holiness as are the ripe and beautiful fall squash and melons, the clear blue autumn sky and the radiant people around our tables. The Zohar describes the sukkah as tzila demehemnuta, the shade of faith/trust. We dwell in the shade of sacred husks and touch the truth that there is no place absent of divinity. Sitting in a simple hut under the most ordinary, discardable leaves, the physical and spiritual interpenetrate as you feel the way you are held in Life in a beautifully simple way. Consciously, softly, you allow yourself to trust enough to relax into the arms of it – bare and simple Life, life-ing all around you and in you, foliage-garbage gifting you a love for this world and being part of it. You deeply inhale the fragrance of this leaf-trash, a sweet mixture of its living and dying. Perhaps, resting under the canopy of the Holy One, it is safe enough to feel your own tender living and dying, the preciousness of the kelipah of your body in the kelipah of this world cradling the fruit of your soul.

The Radzyner Rebbe also notes that God’s protection becomes available where human effort and ownership are relinquished. He explains that we humans categorize psolet, waste, as things we don’t eat or utilize. Once we have put in our good work and extracted the consumable parts of the grain or grapevine, what remains is no longer of use to us. When we divide the world into the categories of useful and not useful, we humans separate ourselves from the rest of creation and assert ourselves and all of our wants, striving, and owning at the center of importance. But sitting under the leafy leftovers, we shift perspective. We let the un-beautiful, un-beneficial leaves cover us in the care and protection that we can only know by setting down our drive, releasing into faith in what is beyond our control, our preferences and our self-generating, self-dependent efforts. Just sit in the lap of the Divine and receive. Be unproductive and allow an opening of the hands and a “gentling of the heart.” To paraphrase poet Laura Gilpin, let “nothing be wasted in nature or in love.” Let yourself be as useless and as precious as the dry vines over your sukkah so that you remember your home in the family of all life, so you remember that your worth isn’t dependent upon what can be extracted from you. 

I don’t press my own wine or grow and winnow my own grain. This year, however, I want to start the practice of adding to my schach the wilted flowers, fallen branches and shriveled plants from my garden and nearby woods. If you don’t have your own sukkah, perhaps you can gather what you would otherwise cut down and compost and give it a home above your head. May we be blessed with the gifts of holy husks and sacred leftovers this Sukkot. May they unfurl within us sweet, simple joy and freedom in the protection of this divine shelter.