Posted on September 25, 2026 by Rabbi Noah Diamondstein
Dear friends,
I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing many of you tonight at our triple-celebration–our Back-to-Shul Barbeque, Shabbat, and Erev Sukkot! After what I felt was a really meaningful and successful journey yet again through Elul and the Yamim Nora’im (Days of Awe or High Holy Days), it is a joy to begin the school year yet again.
Sukkot is a time of reflection. We read the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) and are reminded that there is a time for everything under the sun–for living, for dying, for war, for peace, for casting things away, and for gathering things together. The book opens with a sober statement: generations come and go, and there’s nothing new under the sun. Our sukkot themselves are reminders of our own temporariness. A structure that goes up in just a couple hours can just as easily be blown down. Our lives are like that; on the cosmological scale, we’re here for but the blink of an eye. Yet, we know the kind of impact that our lives can have on others and on the world! As Mary Oliver wrote:
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Kohelet’s response to Oliver is simple: Eat, drink, and be merry! (Koh. 8:15) Jewish joy seems to come at quite a premium these days, so we need to lean into these opportunities to be joyful together. We don’t call Sukkot Z’man Simchateinu, the Time of Our Joy, for nothing!
As I said in my remarks on both the evening and the morning of Rosh Hashanah, TBE is leaning into heart-forward Jewish living and raising Shabbat joy to its highest heights! In a world of so much apartness, I hope our full sanctuary and sukkah tonight will be a testament to our communities commitment to being together.
Shabbat shalom and chag sameach,
Rabbi Noah Diamondstein