Reminders Of A Fragile World

Is it going to rain this evening? Do we need to move our Sukkot celebration? Are the chairs still wet from last night’s storm? Throughout the week I was continuously checking and rechecking my “weather app” on my iphone, monitoring the hourly forecast, and wondering whether family meals and communal celebrations would be affected by the blustery October weather. “Why do we need these headaches?” I sometimes wondered. Wouldn’t it be easier to just plan indoor gatherings during this unpredictable season?

It would indeed be simpler to insulate ourselves from the volatile, ever-changing world. Winds can be fierce, storms can be harrowing, and conditions can be unpredictable. As city-dwellers in the vibrant city of New York we lead privileged lives. We are blessed with secure roofs over our heads, heated buildings, and refrigerators filled with abundant, healthy food. We can take buses, subways, cars and taxis to take us where we need to go, rarely having the natural world interrupt our plans. Not everyone in our city or our world is so lucky. Yet we do not live in quite the vacuum-sealed world we like to imagine.

The festival of Sukkot is a reminder that fundamentally our world is fragile, and we are vulnerable. We may be able to construct walls and roofs to protect us but there are moments in all of our lives when strong winds blow in. At times these storms have devastating impact. Other times we feel the walls shake, or the roaring thunder, but then it passes. When we feel our worlds shaking it can be very frightening. When our children experience their world trembling we parents want desperately to hold on to the roof to protect every ounce of their beings. We face limitations in our ability to shelter our children despite our best efforts. Like the sukkah, the world is insecure. Sometimes the best that we can do is to huddle close to the ones we love. Sometimes we can make adjustments, find alternative shelter, or reach out for help. Other times we can only hunker down as we face the storm – with the fear, the pain, and the acute discomfort of not being in control.

If we are mindful, when the sun shines again we will feel more appreciative of the warmth on our faces, more aware of our vulnerability, and more grateful for the walls and the community that keeps us safe and protected when they can.

Author
Recent Posts

Ilana Ruskay-Kidd

Ilana has been serving the Jewish educational community in New York City in multiple capacities for the past twelve years. Most recently, she served as the Director of The Saul and Carole Zabar Nursery School at the JCC in Manhattan. Prior to being named to this position in 2006, she worked at the JCC as Director of Young Families and then as Senior Director of Family Life, supervising programs serving families and children from birth to eighteen years old. Ilana began her teaching career at the Central Park East school in Harlem and went on to become a founding teacher at the Ella Baker School, an alternative public school in Manhattan. She then worked as an Early Childhood Curriculum Consultant for the Children's Aid Society where she developed curricula with directors and teachers in day care, Head Start and private nursery school programs throughout the city.

Ilana received her B.A. from Harvard College and a Master's Degree in Education from Bank Street College. She was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives there with her husband and three children.

Latest posts by Ilana Ruskay-Kidd (see all)