Shoeless on Sukkot
Finding new meaning in old traditions — and in each other
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
It’s a weekday morning, hectic as ever, and I’m holding two bulging backpacks as I step over my kindergartener, who’s kneeling over our entryway shoe bin and looking forlorn.
“I think I left them by the bounce house yesterday,” Levi says, apologizing with his eyes.
We attended a Sukkot festival at a local Chabad last night and apparently, his shoes are still there.
After some quick improvisation, Levi and his sister, Sam, rush off to school—he in a pair of her old sneakers, pink and two sizes too big. I drop our remaining child, Benji, at preschool, then head back to the shul to retrieve the missing shoes.
A bearded man in a kippah answers the door. I’m self-conscious about both my predicament and my outfit (shorts and a tank top), but he smiles at my story, which begins and ends with some variation of: “This is so embarrassing. Who leaves with a barefoot child and doesn't notice?” (It’s a disingenuous question—our children have a reputation for shoelessness. But he doesn’t need to know that.)
“Don’t worry,” the man says. “I’ll go look for the shoes. You go into the sukkah and do the mitzvah with my son.”
Brushing away my protests and thanks, he heads into the grass in the vicinity of yesterday’s bounce house. Hesitant, I head into the sukkah. As I fumble through the lulav and etrog-shaking with his patient son, I’m touched that this man is willing to crawl around a field for an underdressed stranger so she can wave around a palm frond and an oversized lemon. As I’m finishing up, the man leaps from his knees, triumphant, and thrusts his arms into the air, a pair of shoes in each fist.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he calls from across the grass. “You weren’t the only one who forgot!”
I get closer and recognize Levi’s sneakers in one of the man’s hands.
And Benji’s slip-ons in the other.
I’d been telling this story on repeat for a year, making fun of my husband and myself for our absentmindedness and our laissez-faire stance on footwear. That’s generally how it comes up: someone comments on the kids’ bare feet; I regale them with the anecdote; we all laugh.
But the memory hit me differently this Sukkot, just after the anniversary of the October 7 massacre. Throughout the holiday week, my husband and I pulled every Jew we could find into the sukkah we’d erected in our backyard, using a PJ Library book to guide our sometimes-invited, sometimes-unsuspecting visitors through the process of waving around the lulav and etrog we’d purchased from Chabad. We even lured in two neighbor families who’d been out on a walk with out-of-town relatives. I never caught their names, but they followed me through my side yard to shake my lulav.
This left me feeling amused and verklempt—a mixture of emotions I recognized from the year before, when the man at Chabad had sent me into the sukkah. But this time, I was the man. No beard or kippah (I was in my pajamas—I am never properly dressed for these things), and absolutely no experience leading other Jews in prayer. It smacked of imposter syndrome and felt kind of evangelical, yes. But mostly, it felt meaningful. Important.
Not because I fully grasp the history or significance behind the tradition (I’m learning!), but because we were Jewish people doing a Jewish thing—together. Because, for thousands of years, Jews all over the world have stood in the huts and shaken the branches, and there we were—a year after the most gruesome massacre of Jews since the Holocaust—standing in the hut and shaking the branches.
That’s what it means to be Jewish now: fiercely and proudly embracing our people’s traditions, from the everyday tenet of welcoming the stranger to the once-a-year ritual with the pricey lemon. It’s about unity. Continuity. Identity. About my children growing up with these practices and values and understanding that, as Jews, they’re a part of something ancient and special and strong and good.
Since October 7, 2023, I, like Jews all over the world, have felt despair and fear and anger—but also pride and love and determination. I have felt more connected and more driven to connect. To come together, to lean into our identity and history, to find new meaning in age-old traditions and in each other. To tap into what I now realize has been there all along.
It’s a current running through Jewish communities both physical and virtual, observant and secular. It’s what so many of us are feeling as we fasten our Star of David necklaces or donate to Jewish organizations or light Shabbat candles, whether for the millionth time or the first. It’s what moved me to pounce on my Jewish neighbors during Sukkot. The same thing, I suspect, that moved them to follow.
The Jewish people have survived thousands of years, and we’re surviving this — figuring it out as we go, following the footsteps of those who came before us. Lacing up (or not) and moving forward, together.
Risa Polansky Shiman is a mother and writer whose work can be found in publications like Kveller, HuffPost and MUTHA Magazine. She lives in South Florida with her husband and three children.
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
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Love your writing Risa! Thank you for sharing your light in your own unique way. Spreading your important message. I enjoyed every minute of reading. Rachel.