Boxed In Mitzvah

America is the land of the boxes. We eat and sleep in a box. We drive our uber-boxy SUV to work in a boxy cubicle. If we are lucky, we work in a corner box where an oversized LCD box stares us down everyday. After work, we return to our home-box and watch our oversized Plasma box. If we need something, we hop over to our nearby box-store.

Huey Lewis said it best, "It's hip to be square."

G‑d is keyed into our trendy lifestyles. In an effort to provide mitzvahs that accommodate our modern angular leanings he provided the mitzvah of sukkot. G‑d has a modern approach to mitzvahs, and he wants us to help build it!

If G‑d said, "Hey, I got this Geo-Dome for you guys" do you think we would have responded favorably?If G‑d said, "Hey, I got this Geo-Dome for you guys" do you think the Jewish People would have responded favorably? G‑d knows his audience. From a historic view, the sukkah represents the Clouds of Glory that protected the Jewish People in the desert long ago. But, can we understand this mitzvah against the cover of a Crate and Barrel catalog?

I think the message of the sukkah is about thinking outside the box but still using a protractor. The box is a great shape, but we need to think bigger. G‑d stretches us with his mitzvahs to help us become more malleable. We are too set up in our little boxes to make a quick break into the infinite. Only with baby steps can we begin the journey away from our claustrophobic right angles. Our first step is to make another box, but build this one for G‑d. It is a small humble box, where we fight bees by day and frost by night, but we shall overcome. The box that we build is the opening movement towards embracing the sacred geometry of G‑d's Infinity within the context of our square lives.