September 23, 2026

Much of our attention today is understandably focused on protecting our community from those who are hostile toward the Jewish people and threaten us from the outside. Indeed, we must fight antisemitism, advocate for Israel and hold our elected officials accountable for protecting our safety and welfare. Yet even as we confront the threats from without, equally urgent, if not more so, is the need to fortify ourselves from within. 

At a time of enormous challenge for Jews in Israel and throughout the world, our people are painfully divided. To be sure, there are real and consequential issues, particularly in Israel, that directly affect people’s lives and the future of the country. The problem is not that we disagree, even passionately. It is the way we disagree and what too often happens as a result of those disagreements. Political and religious differences become personal. We label the other, dismiss one another and sometimes question the legitimacy or sincerity of Jews who see things differently or have a different lifestyle or level of observance. At precisely the time when we need to be unified, there is far too much judgment and not nearly enough caring.

At this critical moment, we need to strengthen our sense that we are one Jewish family and create communities where every individual is valued, respected and welcomed. Sukkot has something important to teach us about how to do that.

A friend once visited Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, one of the great Torah leaders of prewar Europe, during Sukkot. Rav Chaim Ozer invited him to eat in the sukkah, but because the Rav was feeling unwell from the cold, he ate inside. After finishing his meal, Rav Chaim Ozer returned to the sukkah to spend time with his guest. The guest was surprised. If Rav Chaim Ozer was exempt from sitting in the sukkah because he was a mitzta’er, someone experiencing significant discomfort, why had he come back outside?

Rav Chaim Ozer explained: “A mitzta’er is exempt from the mitzvah of sukkah. But that doesn’t make me exempt from the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim, welcoming a guest and keeping you company.”

This ideal of welcoming others is embedded in the spirit of Sukkot. The holiday has two central mitzvot: taking the daled minim, the four species (etrog, lulav, hadasim and aravot) and dwelling in the sukkah. Regarding the etrog, the Torah explicitly introduces the concept of beauty: “U’lekachtem lachem bayom harishon pri etz hadar,” “Take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of a beautiful tree.” The Torah calls attention to hadar, beauty. We carefully examine an etrog to make sure it is free of blemishes and imperfections. We search for one that is especially beautiful.

There is no comparable requirement of hadar regarding the sukkah. There is, to be sure, a general idea of hiddur mitzvah, beautifying mitzvot, and we creatively decorate our sukkot. But the sukkah itself can be an inherently imperfect structure. It can have three walls. There can be gaps in the bamboo roof. There are all sorts of halachic principles that allow us to work with incomplete walls and imperfect boundaries.

Why the difference between the etrog and the sukkah?

Perhaps the answer can be found in another distinction between these two mitzvot. When speaking about the etrog and all four species, the Torah says “ulekachtem lachem”, “take for yourselves.” It is a personal obligation and at least for the Biblical mitzvah on the first day, one must legally own the lulav and etrog to fulfill the mitzvah. (This year, with the first day of Sukkot falling on Shabbat, we will not take the four species that day.)

The sukkah stands in stark contrast. Unlike the four species, you can fulfill the mitzvah in someone else’s sukkah. Moreover, the Torah says, “Kol ha’ezrach b’Yisrael yeshvu basukkot,” all of Israel shall dwell in sukkot. The Talmud derives from these words the striking idea that “kol Yisrael re’uyim leishev b’sukkah achat”, all of Israel can dwell together in a single sukkah, at least in theory. Thus, while the etrog symbolizes the individual, the sukkah represents the collective.

Perhaps that explains the different requirements. When it comes to looking inward at ourselves, we should strive for hadar (beauty). We are encouraged to engage in introspection, honestly notice the blemishes and ask ourselves how we can become better Jews and human beings. If someone wants to push himself or herself to a higher religious level, that is beautiful, and striving for personal growth is indeed a core Jewish value.

But when we look at another Jew, the sukkah teaches us to have a different mindset. The sukkah, which reflects the collective, says: make room and welcome people in. When it comes to community, we need to be more flexible and less particular about imperfections. After all, we know far less than we may think about another person’s spiritual life: their background, their struggles, the effort they are making or the direction in which they are growing.

A Hasidic master once asked his students to imagine two people climbing a ladder. One is standing on the eighth rung and the other on the second. He asked them, “Which one is higher?” While the obvious answer would seem to be the former, the Rabbi explained that it all depends on which direction each person is heading. Perhaps the person on the eighth rung began on the ninth, while the person on the second rung began on the ground floor and is climbing upward. From this perspective, the one on the second rung may actually be “higher.”

We don’t know the whole story. There are differences in background and education, challenges and opportunities, character, effort and potential. We don’t even know who is more observant or more righteous. All of this is for God to judge. Our task is not to rank another Jew’s spiritual standing, but to recognize the complexity of a journey we cannot fully see.

This does not mean Judaism has no ideals or standards. Of course it does. Nor does it mean there is never a place for sensitive tochacha, guidance or gentle critique, depending on the situation and your relationship. 

But there is a profound difference between having standards for ourselves and using those standards as a measuring stick with which to diminish someone else. Many people have it backwards. We are forgiving of ourselves while being demanding of others. Sukkot asks us to reverse the equation. When looking inward at oneself (and one’s children), “examine the etrog,” engage in introspection, seek to improve when necessary, ask difficult questions and strive for excellence. When looking outward at others, however, think of the sukkah. Open the door and welcome people in. Be less exacting about perceived flaws and instead see the good in others. 

That message feels especially urgent right now. Too often disagreement becomes disdain, and ideological difference becomes personal animosity. We are quick to decide who is right, who is wrong, who belongs and who does not. But our differences should never obscure our shared identity, our responsibility for one another and our commitment to Ahavat Yisrael, love for our fellow Jews. 

There is a growing hunger among many Jews today for community, meaning and purpose and a deeper connection to their heritage. We should welcome them because they are family. We need to create warm, accessible and nonjudgmental spaces where Jews of every background can gather, celebrate, learn, ask questions, build friendships and experience the beauty and relevance of Jewish life. 

The goal of connecting with another Jew should not be to make that person more religious, but rather to embrace that person as a member of our family. Because while we may be a small nation, we are the world’s biggest family. And family does not give up on one another. Family wants everyone around the table, because we care about each other.

Kol Yisrael areivim zeh bazeh, we all are responsible for one another. The word areiv can also mean sweet (as in the morning blessing over Torah study, “veharev nah”). The responsibility we need to emphasize today is to see the sweetness, goodness and value in another Jew. Before Torah can transform someone’s life, that person first must know that he or she is wanted, that they belong, that they matter. 

The Baal Shem Tov once used a powerful image to illustrate how deeply we depend on one another. A king wanted a beautiful bird that was perched high in a tree. His servants formed a human ladder, one standing on the shoulders of another, so someone at the top could reach it. But those near the bottom grew impatient and walked away. The entire structure collapsed.

That is the meaning of community. We are part of a human ladder where every person is supporting someone else. Remove one person from the structure and all of us become weaker. As the sukkah teaches us, we are all interconnected.

Our enemies have often understood this better than we do. They don’t ask what synagogue we attend, what denomination we identify with or precisely how observant we are before they attack us. We should not need antisemitism to remind us that we are one people.

As we enter our sukkot this year, perhaps we can take that message with us. Let the etrog remind us to look critically at ourselves and let the sukkah remind us to look generously at one another.

There is room in the sukkah for the Jew who looks like us and the Jew who doesn’t, the one whose observance resembles ours and the one whose journey has taken an entirely different path. We do not know who is on a higher rung. We do know that we are climbing the same ladder.

At a time when our people face so many threats from the outside, we cannot afford to be divided from within. The more we strengthen the bonds between us, make room for one another and deepen our sense of shared responsibility, the stronger we will be in confronting whatever comes our way.

This Sukkot, let us work to build communities with less judgment and more caring, less labeling and more listening, less sinah (hatred) and more ahava (love). Let us be more concerned with our own spiritual imperfections and more generous in how we see the person standing next to us.

There should be a place for every Jew in our sukkah. And there should be a place for every Jew in our story. 

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Rabbi Kalman Topp was the senior rabbi of Beth Jacob Congregation for 17 years.

Sukkot is the festival marking our turn from the introspection of Rosh Hashanah and the inner work of Yom Kippur. Newly fashioned and cleansed by the pageantry and introspection of our most inward-facing holy day, we burst out in community, in celebration of the bounty of the world, and in the capacity of our ancient people to find shelter and joy everywhere we establish our homes, our schools, our communal institutions. On this Festival of Booths, we built shelters that are simultaneously frail and resilient, reflecting the existential reality of human life and community. Launching the month of Elul to turn inward, to plumb the depths of our souls, the central time of the month pivots to articulate a Jewish understanding of why engagement with the world is an essential component of religious life and a core affirmation of Jewish values.  

In making that case, it is crucial that we locate this agenda not from a shallow perspective of partisan politics, but from the core of personhood, a spiritual fleshing out of how we are in the world, and of who we are in the world.  Before we are social creatures, we are born into the world singular and curious, carrying in our bodies the entire history of our species, and absorbing from our families and communities the cultural DNA of survival, meaning and purpose. 

In sketching out the related nature of our humanity, the place to start is in utero. Inside the womb the fetus does not know (from what we can tell) where her identity stops and the boundaries of other people begin. As we form in our very first few weeks and then months in the world, we live in a world of complete oneness, in which all is united with all, all is merged with all; in which all of our needs are magically met. We start the first (however many) months of our life in an environment that is perfectly suited to our own growth, our own formation and our own fulfillment. At some time during this gestation, we start to hear certain recurrent voices, and those voices become familiar to us. We start to hear the recognizable voices of our parents around us; we might even start to hear the voices of siblings, grandparents, cousins, if we have them; certain familiar sounds, that by the time we are born we already register as familiar, and mishpacha, and our own.  

At the moment of birth, we emerge into a world where the encompassing security of our environment shifts, but our perception of unity continues. The new baby experiences a world in which hunger and thirst are magically, instantly met with the milk of snuggling satiation; in which a sense of being dirty or uncomfortable is met with joyous cleaning.  Needs are met as if by magic, and their satisfaction is accompanied by human connection, love and interaction. All of these transactions happen without the baby’s distinguishing between who he is and the fact that there are other, separate people out there.  

The process of growing out of babyhood and into toddlerhood, and then the rest of life, is a continuing process of differentiation in which consciousness forms around the boundaries of one’s own identity as distinct and separate. This individuation is, by-and-large, good. Becoming aware of one’s own distinctiveness, and of the separate identity of other people, leads us to individualism, to creativity, to an ability to play and interact with the world and with the other people whom we discover sharing our world.  

That individuation is also a necessary part of having an identity. You cannot know who you are unless you simultaneously know who you are not. Perhaps this is why our new year launches by focusing on our individual identities and the need for teshuvah, but soon thereafter broadens to include a communal pilgrimage festival, which we all engage together, and one that also distinguishes the Jewish components of our identity from our more universal human aspects. It is why Havdallah (distinction) — in concept and in ritual — plays such a key role in our own tradition. The making of distinction is an essential component not only of Jewish identity, but of any identity whatsoever. Perhaps it is for that reason that the Talmud notes (Kiddushin 5b, Bava Metzia 61a, Avodah Zarah 46a), “The nature of this one is not like that one; and the nature of that one is not like this one.”  Each is unique; each is to be recognized for their distinctiveness and for what they alone can bring into the world.  God makes none of us redundant.  And yet, this distinctiveness comes at a very high price.

As we recognize ourselves as distinct and separate from others and from the world around us, we also become open to the disappointment of the chasm that separates us from others. People we love disappoint us. We realize that feeding does not automatically follow hunger; that one can be soiled physically or emotionally or spiritually, and no one will necessary come to cleanse us. Each of us, as we emerge into our separate selfhoods, begins to absorb the bruises and disappointments of a world that is not a womb in which we are automatically sheltered and nourished.  It is so tempting to respond to life’s bruises by becoming callous or indifferent or cruel.

Years ago, living in Orange County, having bought our first suburban home, we did the thing that all suburban families are required to do virtually by law – we purchased a dog.  We went to the local pound and found this great, floppy puppy with big feet and big ears and lots of enthusiasm for life. Being that she was a puppy, she loved everyone and everything.  Until that fateful day, when wandering outside the house, she discovered — “cat” — the ultimate other.  Humie, assuming that everyone has the intrinsic goodness of a dog, went up to the cat and in her own loving way, invited the cat into fellowship and friendship.  The cat, in its feline way, declined the offer by swiping Humie across the nose with her claws out.  The shock (and the blood) on the dog’s face was palpable, and then she responded with the renewal of an age-old animosity with which hurt dogs have always responded to uppity cats. Since that time she has punished untold numbers of possibly innocent felines for the sins of the one that hurt her so deeply.  

We all do the same. We are all inevitably wounded by our disappointments in life. We are shocked and appalled by the betrayal, the disappointment, the wound and we try to protect ourselves from future hurt by preemptively lashing out at anyone and anything that reminds us of the person or the scenario in which we were first wounded.  Or, we attempt to spare ourselves pain by wrapping ourselves in the isolating cloak of indifference. The pain of others is often too great to bear, their presence, and sometimes their absence. The death or betrayal of loved ones leaves us radically vulnerable for sh’leimut, a sense of longing in a world that is shattered eternally.  

And then, there are socio-economic forces that also leave us vulnerable and alone. In one remarkable observation, the sages of the Talmud (Sanhedrin 98b) tell us, “When a person comes home and finds their son or daughter lying in hunger, it’s as though they were bitten by a snake.” There is poverty in the world; there is devastation in the world; there are the results of natural catastrophes; and there are humanly-constructed disasters in which we turn our back on the suffering of untold numbers of people who struggle simply to make ends meet, to put food upon the table, who live paycheck to paycheck, and barely that, and live one disaster away from complete catastrophe. And, the way many of us try to live in a world in which such suffering occurs is to chisel a hard casing around our hearts.  We shelter our hearts from feeling the rawness of life by metastasizing what the Bible calls an uncircumcised heart: 

“Egypt and Judah, and Edom, and the Ammonites, and Moab, and all who dwell in the wilderness; for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all of the House of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart (Jer 9:25).”

One wonders, which is worse? To be uncircumcised is as great a deficiency as the Torah and the Prophets label, and Jeremiah knew what he was saying when he looked at his own people and told us that we are orlei lev; we are uncircumcised at heart.  The hard casing of our own hurts, our own entitlement, our own focus on our own agenda, shields us from the real pain in the world, from the needs of others, and from our need to attend.  We train ourselves not to see, and not to hear, and not to feel.  That description, by the way, ought to sound idolatrous to you. The Psalmist tells us, “They have mouths, but cannot speak; they have eyes but they cannot see; they have ears but they cannot hear; they have noses, but they cannot smell (Ps 115:5-6).” To be incapable of feeling the need extant in the world, to be unwilling to see the humanity of our brothers and sisters, to be unable to speak out when words are needed; to be unable to hold out a hand, is to make of ourselves a pesel (an idol) and an abomination. 

We create our own orlei lev, and we use them to try to shield ourselves from the pain of the world. But in separating our self-identity from its rootedness in the world around us, as though the others we encounter are apart from ourselves, our souls also shrivel. In the process of cocooning ourselves we lose our sensitivity to our own feelings, to the loved ones around us, and to the world of which we are a part.  We diminish our own capacity to empathize and to feel, so absorbed are we in shielding ourselves from the onslaught that constantly face those who are open to feeling. We lose in the process the feeling that we can change things, and that, indeed, we were put here to make things better.  And, we lose our sense of joy; our capacity for wonder.  Elie Wiesel observed: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.  The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference, and the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference. Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.”  The only way to sustain orlei lev is to withdraw from the fullness of community, from the richness of life, from the death of caring.  But, of course, try as we might to build hard walls of hardened flesh to separate ourselves from our own humanity and from those of the people around us, such separation is never fully possible. We gather with loved ones inside our beautiful sukkot, but the prayers themselves force us to invite in additional guests – to once again honor our connection to those of earlier generations and the broader human family. 

In a different context, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Piaseczno in his spiritual diary Tzav Ve-Zeruz observes, “Stay away from the middle of the river; don’t be concerned with what people say. But this alone will not protect you, because you cannot completely seclude yourself.”  Try as we will to protect ourselves by avoiding engagement, connection, and involvement, life crashes in, time and time again. We are incapable of staving life off and therefore devote greater and greater expenditures of energy into shielding ourselves from what breaks through anyway. In that futile process, the problems of the world continue to grow, to fester and to oppress.  It was Albert Einstein who noted:  “The world is too dangerous to live in, not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who sit and let it happen.” Eventually we become trapped in our own web, originally designed to protect us, but which ultimately traps us. Our cultivated insensitivity, our desire to shield ourselves, precludes us from appreciating life’s wonder and the world’s beauty.  Sukkot is the festival to cure that isolated callousness; the Torah wisely calls it our festival of joy, zman simchatenu.

I recall a conversation with my childhood rabbi, a man who, to this day, I continue to remember with great affection, confiding to me that he had never lived with a pet because it would one day age and die, and he couldn’t bear the pain of its loss. I remember as a nine-year-old thinking that there was something wrong with that attitude; true it is that pain is the price we pay for loving, and the only way to shield oneself from pain is to never love.  But then we never live; we are never fully present.  There is only one way to remain fully alive – we must tear asunder the deadening wall encasing our hearts. In the words of the Torah, we must have the courage and the faith to circumcise our hearts anew: 

“Circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked.  For the Holy One, your God, is the God of Gods, and the Lord of Lords, a great God, mighty and awesome, who favors no person, nor takes bribes. God executes the judgment of the orphan and the widow and loves the stranger, giving them food and garment.  Love therefore, the stranger, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt (Dt 10:16).”

It is true that circumcising our heart does open us to feel pain, but also joy, and wonder, and community, and connection.  Rooting that courage to circumcise in the presence of the Holy One, being nestled in the bosom of God, gives us the strength, the courage and the faith to risk the pain, to feel the pain.  

If you are not prepared to feel humanity’s pain, then you will not be privileged to experience humanity’s triumph. “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all who love her; rejoice for joy with her, all who mourn for her (66:10)” says the Prophet Isaiah, to which the rabbis comment in Massekhet Bava Batra (60b), “Anyone who mourns for Jerusalem merits to share her joy, and anyone who does not mourn for her will not share her joy.”  

We are among the most privileged people on the globe.  Our wealth is the wealth of history’s grandest kings. We possess the security of people who lived in ancient mighty palaces surrounded by mighty armies there to protect them. Yet our wealth, and our security, threatens to deaden us. I invite you, this Sukkot, to come into contact with life in its fullness, to circumcise your heart. When we stand before another person, we stand in the presence of God. When we sit in a classroom, an office, a public space, we stand in the presence of God. When we look out in the world and see a need that we have a capacity to meet, we stand under an obligation to God, Who gave you life, Who gave you talent, Who privileged you beyond the dreams of most of humanity to this day, and certainly of our ancestors across the millennia.  As we learn from the poet Hillel Zeitlin, 

Praise Me, says God, I will know that you love Me.  

Curse Me, I will know that you love Me.  

Praise Me or curse Me, 

I will know that you love Me.  

Sing out My graces, says God. 

Raise your fist against Me and revile, says God.  

Sing My graces or revile, 

Reviling is also praise, says God.  

But if you sit fenced off in your apathy, 

Entrenched in “I don’t give a damn” says God, 

If you look at the stars and yawn, says God, 

If you see suffering and you don’t cry out, 

If you don’t praise and you don’t revile,

Then I created you in vain, says God.

This Sukkot, I bless us that we train our ears to truly hear the cries around us — the cries of those we don’t know, as well as those we do.  This year, I bless us that we open our eyes to truly see the beauty and the holiness of the world, and of the person before us at each and every moment and to see the godliness of their aspirations and their fears. This year, I bless us that we can gird ourselves to risk living life whole, embracing each other as brother and sister, and pledging ourselves to fashion communities in which no one is an outsider, no one rejected, no one made invisible. This year, I bless us that we should muster the strength to show our love for Avinu sheh-bah shamayim by loving all of God’s children, by honoring all of God’s creation, and by participating in the sacred and mighty work of repairing this broken world under the shelter of a true sukkat shalom, a tabernacle of peace.

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Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson, a Contributing Writer to the Jewish Journal, is the Goldstine Distinguished Scholar at American Jewish University

This year, Sukkot has special significance. Beyond the womb that we will all crawl into, beyond the stars above that “shined up on Abraham and Sarah,” beyond the reminder of the evanescence of life and all of its fragility, this year, I will invite Dolly and Gloria and Annie and Annette (Zichronot L’vrachot).

Ushpizin invite us to “welcome in our ancestral constellation and dwell amongst them.” This year, it’s Ushpizot, for the women. It’s the year of the Feminist Visitation.

As I turn into the mystical call of the time, I will invoke Annie Dillard, the transcendental feminist writer who brought Thoreau into the 20th century and into the feminist movement through the invocation of the medieval kabbalists as they welcome the Ushpizin:

Enter, holy and sublime hosts; Enter, holy and sublime leaders; Enter, faithful hosts, to sit in the shade of sublime faith; in the shade of the Blessed Holy One,in the shade of the Divine-Presence.

No doubt, Annie dwells at the entrance of our mystical huts, watching the birds soaring above as the sunrays cast their silhouette of palm leaves. Her presence is like the shade of a tree beside us, with observations of radical amazement of what we Jews offer to a God that transcends pagan beliefs as we reclaim our humanity. With her on the “other side,” I call in her presence to endow me with the wonder of being alive. 

This year, when we follow the command of inviting the poor to our table, I will invoke the presence of Dolly Parton, the iconoclastic country singer who brought the justice and feminist movements to those who may have never realized they needed liberation. Dolly, I will welcome you into the sukkah this year, as I sit amongst the most needy. I will play “Hello, God” as I invoke the presence of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, D’vora, Bruriah and Rashi’s Daughter to do the holy work of repair in our time. I will raise my eyes to the heavens, and pray with awakened hope that something is smiling down upon our Sukkah, embodying grace and generosity, like the Sukkot holiday itself. 

And as I apprehend the stars above, twinkling between the leaves, I will welcome in Gloria Steinem. With these same stars above, I remember the 19-year-old I once was, at a fundraiser at Nell’s in Chelsea, where I first met Gloria. Indeed, she wore her trademark aviator glasses and arrow straight parted hair. I will recall the prayer that came out of my mouth, a student at Barnard who was mystified by her power, as the words “you are even more beautiful than I could have imaged” tumbled out of my mouth. Star struck, I look to the stars for Gloria, and ask that she guides every woman, young and old, and all of their sons, to create a better world for all, where everyone can feel the call from the stardust within and the stardust beyond to make for a more redeemed presence of Godliness in our time. 

And finally, as I sit with my children, huddled as if in the desert itself, I will whisper stories of their grandmother, Annette Shapiro (z”l) to them. Of how she drove herself from the Valley at 15 in 1945 to attend high school at Fairfax “so she could meet a Nice Jewish Boy.” Of how she loved community and Judaism in a way that worked for her, and how Judaism is a geode for each of us to crack open in our own way and discover its light that is the gift of our inheritance. I will whisper in their ears until their spines rise with goosebumps and giggles from their breath, of how their grandma can always be found in this hallowed space that we crawl into to grasp onto life – all of life – from the origins of time through our own DNA and into the future that will someday be our own visitation.

Beloved Matriarchs, I will welcome all of you there.

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Rabbi Lori Shapiro is the founder and artistic director of The Open Temple in Venice. 

So now that we are past Rosh Hashanah’s shofar blasts, and the intense self-reflection and fasting that comes with Yom Kippur, it’s time to embrace our third major holiday just around the corner. That’s right, you guessed it: Sukkot is here! And there is something wonderfully strange about the objects Judaism hands us on Sukkot. At a moment when American culture is engaged in an anxious debate about men and masculinity, Judaism does not hand men a weapon, a trophy or a throne. It gives us a fragile hut, a palm branch and a piece of fruit. There is deep wisdom for men in Sukkot and its ritual objects.

There are real reasons to worry about men. In 2024, over forty-five thousand Americans died by suicide, and the suicide rate among males was nearly four times that of females, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the same time, our discussion of a “male loneliness epidemic” requires some nuance. A 2025 Pew Research Center study found that men and women report loneliness at roughly equal rates. The more revealing difference is what happens when they are hurting. Only 38% of men said they would be very or extremely likely to turn to a friend for emotional support, compared with 54% of women. Men were also less likely to turn to family members or mental-health professionals.

The problem, in other words, may not simply be that men experience loneliness. It may be that too many men have been taught to suffer alone.

Into that void has stepped an online industry eager to tell boys and men what being a man supposedly requires. Parts of the so-called “manosphere” offer a seductive formula: Become harder, richer and more dominant; stop caring what other people think; treat vulnerability as weakness; regard women as adversaries; measure your worth through money, sex, physical power and status. Research into these online communities has found strains of content promoting rigid ideas of manhood, male dominance and misogyny, while other research has documented manosphere spaces in which misogynistic attitudes and adversarial views of women can proliferate. Let’s not forget about the blatant antisemitism pervasive throughout these online spaces. The American Psychological Association has warned that these communities can reinforce restrictive ideas about masculinity and gender.

We should understand why such messages appeal to some men before simply condemning the men who hear them. They offer belonging to the lonely, certainty to the confused and an identity to boys who are asking one of adolescence’s oldest questions: What does it mean to become a man? An added layer for the boys in our communities makes the question: What does it mean to be a Jewish man? If healthy communities like ours do not offer compelling answers, someone else will.

Sukkot offers one. The first symbol is the sukkah itself. The Torah commands us to leave our homes and dwell in sukkot for seven days (Leviticus 23:42–43). The rabbis describe the spiritual reversal even more forcefully: during Sukkot we make the sukkah our permanent dwelling and our house temporary. Rava explains the command as leaving the fixed (keva) residence, for a temporary (arai) dwelling (Sukkah 2a; Mishnah Sukkah 2:9). That is an extraordinary lesson for men.

Much of traditional male identity has been built around providing stability: build the house, earn the money, protect the family, know the answer, fix the problem. These can be noble responsibilities. But they become dangerous when responsibility mutates into a solid belief that a man must never appear frightened, uncertain or dependent upon anyone else.

The sukkah dismantles that illusion. Its roof leaks. Its walls shake. We can feel the wind through it. And we are commanded not merely to visit this vulnerability but to live inside it. The sukkah teaches that vulnerability is not the opposite of strength. It is part of an honest life. A strong man can say, “I am scared.” “I am grieving.” “I need help.” And/or, “I don’t know what comes next.”

In an age when male suicide remains so alarmingly high, teaching men that asking for help is somehow unmanly is not merely foolish. It can be deadly. Research continues to associate greater conformity to restrictive masculine norms with lower levels of psychological help-seeking. Jewish communities therefore have an obligation that goes beyond sympathy. “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor,” Torah commands (Leviticus 19:16), a verse the Talmud understands as requiring intervention when another person’s life is in danger (B. Talmud Sanhedrin 73a).

Then we pick up the lulav. Jewish lore offers a remarkable interpretation of the Four Species. The lulavresembles the human spine; the myrtle leaves resemble the eyes; the willow resembles the mouth; and the etrog resembles the heart (Vayikra Rabbah 30:14). Men need spines.

We should not replace an unhealthy masculinity with a masculinity afraid of strength itself. Boys and men, like everyone else, need courage, discipline, responsibility, physical confidence, the willingness to protect others, and the capacity to stand firm when a crowd is moving in the wrong direction. But Judaism radically redefines what strength means.

Ben Zoma asks, “Who is mighty?” His answer is not the man who defeats everyone around him. It is the person capable of mastering his own impulses (hakovesh et yitzro – Pirkei Avot 4:1). That is almost the precise opposite of the type of masculinity being sold by many online influencers. Their version of power is domination. Judaism’s version begins with self-mastery. Can you control your anger when humiliation would feel satisfying? Can you hear “no” without becoming cruel? Can you exercise sexual restraint and ask consent? Can you admit wrongdoing? Can you defend someone weaker than yourself? Can you remain responsible when nobody is applauding? That is having a backbone.

But the lulav is incomplete without the etrog. The Midrash identifies the etrog with the heart. That may be the most urgent piece of the entire image. A man can have a spine and still be emotionally hollow. He can be successful, disciplined, muscular, financially secure and completely unable to tell another human being that he is hurting.

The goal of Jewish masculinity should never be to choose tenderness instead of strength. It is to refuse the choice altogether with one’s backbone in one hand, and heart in the other.

And even these cannot fulfill the mitzvah alone. The Four Species must be brought together. Another midrash imagines them as different kinds of Jews—people possessing different combinations of learning and good deeds—and concludes that they must be bound together so that each can help compensate for what another lacks (Vayikra Rabbah 30:12). That, too, is a message men desperately need.

The Surgeon General’s landmark advisory on social connection warned that isolation and inadequate connection carry serious consequences for both physical and mental health. We cannot answer that problem merely by telling individual men to become more emotionally articulate. We have to build places where male friendship can actually happen: synagogues, men’s groups, teams, study partnerships, dinners, volunteer projects and intergenerational relationships where men can speak honestly without embarrassment. FJMC International helps to make all that possible in many different ways.

Sukkot gives us an alternative to the lonely strongman. Build a sukkah and admit that you are vulnerable. Pick up the lulav and develop a backbone. Hold the etrog and protect your heart. Bind yourself to other people. That is not a weaker masculinity. It may be the stronger one we have been looking for.

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Rabbi Noam Raucher is Executive Director of FJMC International.