As the chanting filled the synagogue, I found myself transported to another place and time.
Physically, I was in a Gan (Kindergarden) on the night of Yom Kippur. But as I closed my eyes, I felt the chanting of the room and I was someplace else entirely. I couldn’t figure out where exactly, but my physical circumstances drifted away from me.
I was surrounded by song that seemed to reach across the generations.
It was the night of Yom Kippur, a time in which we all step into the timeless. But something was different here. I was nostalgic, deeply nostalgic, for something I had never seen or experienced. I was nostalgic for something I know very little about. The synagogue I was in follows Nusach Hodu. It is an Indian synagogue. But the closest I come to Indian is an Apache great-grandmother.
On the night of Yom Kippur, the community has swollen just as so many other communities do. But most weeks, there aren’t very many people there. The gabbai of the synagogue (if that is his title) is clearly training his son to carry on their traditions. There is a fierceness in that education – a powerful hope that the Indian traditions can survive and flourish in the land of Israel.
I imagine it must be a tremendous struggle.
At first, their chant seems to create nostalgia for the world they left behind in India.
But then, I imagine myself in Mumbai or Ahmedabad and realize that in those cities, those same chants were also a nostalgic memory. According to tradition, the first seven families of India’s Bene Israel community arrived in India over 2,000 years ago. They were shipwrecked travelers from Judea. Since that time, that tiny community has preserved their connection to the Land and nation of Israel. The fierce defense of tradition I’ve witnessed can’t be a new thing.
But what then is the nostalgia for? Is it for 2,000 years in India – or is it about something before that, in the Land of Israel?
The question doesn’t apply to them alone. So many of our prayers and our songs harken back to days of old. But what days are we reaching for? In ancient times, our life in the Land of Israel was tumultuous and scarred with idol worship. Before that, our life in the desert was filled with rebellion and death.
What are we reaching for? Surely, it is not Egypt? Could it be Avraham’s pre-national relationship? That isn’t the memory of a people.
What is the nostalgia for?
The answer comes with Succot.
Hashem commands the Jewish people to dwell in Sukkot “that your generations may know that I made the Children of Israel to dwell in Sukkot, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your G-d.”
Strangely, before this time, the Torah never mentions that we dwelt in Sukkot. It doesn’t say the Jewish people found schach and established temporary huts. And even if it did, why would this be important? Why would this be so critical as to be a fundamental reminder that Hashem in the Lord our G-d?
A powerful hint comes when Hashem commands the construction of the Mishkan. The Torah says: “On the first day of the first month, you shall rear up the Mishkan of the Tent of Meeting, and you shall put therein the Ark of the Testimony and you shall Sukkot the Ark with the veil.”
The curtains which cover the Ark, the timeless article at the heart of the Mishkan, act as a Sukkah.
When Hashem made the Jewish people swell in Sukkot, he did more than have them dwell in huts or under clouds. He had them dwell behind the veil.