Each year, my family and I gather with a close group of friends and their kids under the sukkah. Although we live all over, we make it a point of traveling annually to share this time together. It’s a day full of joy, connection, and tradition.

As I prepare for this Sukkot, I’m also holding onto the ongoing effects and pain of the memory of the October 7th attacks just two years ago. I was in the sukkah with those same friends when I received the news. Many of us lost people, many lives continue to be lost every day, and the effects abroad and at home are both ongoing and tragic. I hold hope that this anniversary, we turn the corner for our Jewish community to call with one voice for the end of the violence, the return of all hostages, all political prisoners, and a path to safety and healing for all Palestinians and Israelis.

This is what I believe the festival of Sukkot offers us. It is a call to radical hospitality — a reminder that even as we wander in the desert, we are not alone. We are invited to build structures out in the open, with no closed walls or locks to keep people out. We are called to invite all in our communities into these holy places, commanded to invite those most marginalized, those most vulnerable, and those on the edges of society into the center to celebrate with us. Our traumas and pain still unresolved, we open ourselves up to each other, and hopefully towards the path of healing.

It’s in that spirit that my family and friends will gather in our sukkahs this season. We choose to step outside of what we know — out in the open, together with our neighbors — and build the courage needed to heal in community.

In community,
Jamie Beran
CEO, Bend the Arc