Then, we were in touch with the timeless. We were connected to that which has no beginning and no end. We knew, better than any time before or since, that Hashem is the Lord our G-d.
This is what we remember on Sukkot.
But this is also what I was remembering as I listened to that chant in the Indian synagogue.
They were not recalling Mumbai or even Jerusalem of old.
They were recalling, as we all do, those brief moments when we dwelled behind the veil. They were experiencing, once again, our historical encounter with the divine. It is an encounter that can reach us even today.
Our communities, whether European, American, Moroccan or Indian, have endured because of this memory and because of this experience.
And we have endured because we fiercely educate our young to carry on this connection.
As Parshat Ha’azinu so recently reminded us, it takes only one generation for our people to disappear. It takes only one generation for our connection to the timeless – to that memory of life behind the veil – to cease to exist.
Fresh from our Yom Kippur experience, fresh from our taste of timeless, let us again dwell in Sukkot.
Let us dwell in our Sukkot and let us experience the beauty that awaits us behind the curtain.
In the words of the prophet Jeremiah:
הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ יְהוָה אֵלֶיךָ וְנָשׁוּבָה, חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶדֶם
“Bring us back to you, Hashem, and we will return, renew our days as of old.”