Sukkot Day One: Change Your Venue

One of the big questions we all ask, especially as we begin a New Year: “How can I start anew? How can I make a clean break with the past and turn a new page in life?”

Even when we are serious about creating change in our lives, and even when we embark on a new course, why is it that we so often gravitate back to our old patterns, no matter how much we try to change?

Sukkot answers this question for us and provides us with a blueprint for change in a most original and refreshing way.

All change begins with the simple yet deeply elusive: Change yourself. But for some reason, our minds understand that answer but our hearts do not. Emotionally and practically we are far more trapped than we imagine in our past routines. Thus we need an extra shove to jolt us out of our inertia.

Enter Sukkot with its command to leave our homes and comfort zones and move for seven days (the cycle of time) into a portable hut.

A unique perspective on the sukkah, the message of Abraham – the first of the special guests (ushpizin) whom we invite into the sukkah on day one, coupled with the lesson of the bumblebee and the mysterious smuggler of mysterious goods – all offer us a powerful and surprisingly relevant lesson from the humble sukkah:

This simple shack is a game changer. It contains the secret of real and lasting change – how to get unstuck and discover new vistas that can forever alter the course of our lives.