Making space for God in the succah - The Jewish Chronicle

One of the first Jewish songs I learnt as a toddler, second only to Dovid Melech Yisrael (David King of Israel), went like this: “Hashem [ie God] is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere.”

The next part had rather predictable actions: “Up, up, down, down, right, left and all around. Here, there, and everywhere, is where He can be found.” It’s slightly less adorable in print, but you get the idea.

This song was generally sung around the festival of Succot. The hook that pegs the song to the festival is the fact that, on Succot, we take the four species (the branches of palm, myrtle, and willow, alongside the citrus fruit, which we call an etrog), and shake them up and down, right and left, and forward and backwards.

The song indicates that this custom might have something to do with expressing our belief in God’s omnipresence. The word “omnipresent” literally means “all-present”. To be omnipresent is somehow to be in all places at all times. Hashem is here. Hashem is there. Hashem is truly everywhere. And thus, we point to him with our four species.

Omnipresence is a complicated notion. Most of the great Jewish thinkers denied that God is located anywhere in space. If you have a location, then you have a shape — the shape of the region over which you are extended.

If you have a location, then we can divide you into parts; for example, the right half of the region in which you’re located, and the left half. But God allows for no division. God has no parts. God has no shape.

If these thinkers are right, then the song should be rewritten: “Hashem’s not here. Hashem’s not there. Hashem isn’t a spaciotemporal being.” Slightly less catchy. It might confuse the children.

What we need to recognise, to save the original lyrics, is that there are multiple ways of being related to a place. To have power over what goes on somewhere is, in a sense, to be there. God has power over all places.

To know what’s going on somewhere is also, in a sense, to be there. God is all-knowing. To be located in a room, but to be asleep, is to be less present than to be located there and wide awake. God never sleeps.

Quantum physics teaches us that a particle has two very different ways of relating to space. Before you try to measure its location, it will have a “superposition”, which is a little bit like being smudged over a blurry region of space.

As soon as you measure its location, however, this fuzzy, blurry, superposition collapses into a precisely delineated position. Position and superposition are both ways of being related to space. We’ve come to realise that there are many different ways of being somewhere.

Sometimes the Bible makes it clear that God is everywhere (see eg Psalms 139:7-10). But sometimes we’re told that God is especially present in the Tabernacle, the Temple, Jerusalem, the Land of Israel, or the synagogue.

How can God be especially located in one place if He’s all the time located everywhere? The answer is simple: there isn’t just one way of being somewhere. There are many. God can be everywhere in some respects, and be intimately and especially present, in other respects, only in certain special places, at certain special times.

The festival of Succot comes at a point in the agricultural year, in which people would have been feeling especially secure. The harvest is over. The crop for the year is (so to speak) in the bank. Moses warns us repeatedly against the tendency to forget about God at such times, and say, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me” (Deuteronomy 8:17).

It is precisely by leaving the house, at this time of year, when the barn is full of harvested crop, and when we might be tempted to forget about God, in the midst of our material security, that we leave the comfort of our homes and move to a fragile hut, outside. In the fragility of this hut, perhaps we are more likely to notice the presence of Hashem.

It is told of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (1787-1859), that when he was five years old, he was discussing these topics with his father. His father said that God is everywhere. The young Menachem Mendel had a different idea: God is wherever you let him in.

Both of them were right. With our four species, we declare that God is, in some sense, everywhere. In another sense, God is only where we let him in. By leaving our homes to dwell in our succot, we try to make space for God.

Rabbi Professor Samuel Lebens is associate professor of philosophy at Haifa University