Month: September 2026

Sukkot: A Time of Radical Hospitality

Sukkot challenges us to practice radical hospitality: to widen our circles, welcome the stranger, and create communities where everyone has a place.

Autumn has always been my favorite season. Even after an unusually hot summer, the temperatures have begun to drop, and I noticed the first leaves beginning to turn. Chattanooga is finally being blessed with crisp mornings and warm afternoons. Soon, I hope, we will witness the breathtaking beauty of our mountains and trees transformed into brilliant shades of orange, yellow, and red. There is a freshness in the air that signals the arrival of a new season. The autumn light seems to set the colors aglow with an extra measure of radiance. The abundance of nature and the fall harvest naturally draw my heart and mind to Sukkot.

There is a beautiful custom associated with Sukkot called Ushpizin, an Aramaic word meaning “guests.” According to this tradition, during the festival we symbolically welcome seven biblical ancestors into our sukkah: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David. Each knew something of displacement and uncertainty. Each, at some point in his life, was a wanderer, a stranger, a refugee of sorts, or someone far from home.

Traditionally, the ushpizin were all men. In more recent years, many have expanded the custom to welcome ushpizot, seven biblical women whose lives embody courage, faith, wisdom, and resilience, such as Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, and Esther. We might expand the circle even further, inviting into our sukkah people from more recent generations whose lives and values continue to inspire us. Whom would you invite as an honored guest into your sukkah? Whose presence, wisdom, courage, or example would you want beside you beneath its fragile roof?

The custom of Ushpizin reminds us that hospitality is about far more than inviting people we already know to share a meal. Jewish hospitality asks something more of us. It calls us to notice the person standing at the edge of the circle and invite them in. It asks us to extend welcome in real and tangible ways to newcomers in our city, to those who may feel like strangers, to neighbors in need, and to anyone seeking connection and belonging.

Here in Chattanooga, that call feels especially relevant. Our city continues to grow as people arrive from across the country and around the world. Some come for opportunities in health care, education, manufacturing, and technology. Others are drawn by the extraordinary quality of life Chattanooga offers: the beauty of our mountains and rivers, miles of hiking and biking trails, and countless opportunities to enjoy the outdoors. Some arrive as refugees, seeking safety and the possibility of a new beginning. Others come to be closer to children and grandchildren as they enter a new stage of life. Whatever brings someone here, arriving in a new place means searching not only for a house, a job, or the familiar rhythms of daily life. It also means searching for community.

Sukkot challenges us to ask: How can we open our doors, our hearts, and our congregation more fully? How do we make certain that those who enter our community do not simply feel that they have been admitted, but that they are genuinely welcomed, seen, and valued?

Perhaps that is one reason the sukkah is such a powerful symbol. We construct it with intentional vulnerability. Its walls are temporary. Its roof allows rain, wind, sunlight, and starlight to enter. It cannot completely shelter us from the outside world.

That openness reminds us of two essential truths. First, life is fragile and fleeting. Second, what ultimately sustains us is not the strength of the structures surrounding us, but rather the relationships we create within them. Sharing meals, laughter, stories, and friendship inside the sukkah creates a warmth no weather can diminish. Companionship and community sustain us in ways that even the sturdiest walls and most secure roofs cannot.

The sukkah we build at Mizpah Congregation carries this same spirit. It is more than a temporary shelter. It is a symbol of the communal home we seek to create together. Open to the sky above and open to all who enter, it reminds us that our congregation, too, must remain open in every direction. There should always be room for one more person at our table, one more chair in our circle, one more individual searching for a place to belong.

Perhaps this is the radical hospitality of Sukkot: not simply opening the door, but creating a community in which people know that their presence matters. A community in which they know that others will celebrate their joys, share their sorrows, and care about what happens in their lives.

Sukkot begins this evening, September 25. You are warmly invited to join us for our Erev Shabbat/Erev Sukkot service in the sukkah in our garden, followed immediately by our “Pizza in the Hut” dinner. Please see the flyer below for details. You are also invited to visit our beautiful sukkah throughout the week.

Chag Sameach. May this Sukkot season inspire us to open wide our sukkot, our homes, our hearts, and our lives, and to ensure that all who enter know the embrace of community.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

Spilling Coffee From the Cup

When life overwhelms us, we may be surprised by what “spills out,” and what it reveals about ourselves.

This Shabbat, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is known as Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat of Return. It falls during the Aseret Y’mei T’shuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance, a sacred period devoted to introspection, reflection, prayer and study.

During these days, we are invited to look inward, to examine our lives with honesty, and to consider not only who we have been, but who we aspire to become in the year ahead.

In that spirit, I offer this parable:

Spilling Coffee from the Cup
(Adapted by Rabbi Paul Kipnes and Rabbi Julia Atlas Weisz. Who adapted it from Why Did You Spill the Coffee? A Great Analogy
Contributed by Ashish Bhavnani, Shared by Chandru Gidwani)

A young woman was holding a cup of coffee
At the synagogue
when someone came along
and accidentally hit her arm,
making her spill the coffee everywhere.

The rabbi saw what happened,
Rushed over to make sure she was okay,
And then
Sensing an opportunity for a life lesson
asked:
“Why do you think you spilled the coffee?”

The woman answered,
“Well, of course,
Because someone bumped into me!”
The rabbi shook her head
And said,
“Not precisely.
You spilled the coffee
because the coffee was in the cup.

If tea had been in it,
you would have spilled tea.
Whatever is inside the cup
is what will come out.
Therefore,
when life comes along
and shakes you,
which will happen,
whatever is inside of you
will come out.
It’s easy to fake it
until you get rattled.

The Rabbi said:
So we have to ask ourselves….
What’s inside our cups?
When life gets tough,
What spills over?
Anger, bitterness,
harsh words and actions?
Or
Joy, gratefulness,
peace and humility?

With what will we fill ourselves,
When it sometimes feels like
our cups are being drained?
The choice is yours!

In these Yamim Noraim,
These High Holy Days,
May we work diligently and intentionally
Toward filling our cups
with gratitude and forgiveness,
With joy and gentleness,
With words of affirmation for ourselves and others
So that this year may truly be
A Shana Tova, a good year, a sweet year, a year filled with all the worthy blessings of our hearts.

Shana Tova, G’mar Chatima Tova, and Shabbat Shalom! May the year ahead bring goodness and blessing, may we be sealed for a life of meaning and purpose, and may the peace of Shabbat renew our spirits.

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

Shana Tova – A New Year Bright With Promise

As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 meets the promise of a New Year, how might memory help us create a year of greater hope, compassion, and peace?

As we stand at the threshold of 5787, I find myself thinking about the extraordinary gift of new beginnings.

Rosh Hashanah invites us to meet whatever the year ahead may bring with courage, hope, and the opportunity to begin again. To imagine what might yet be possible. To choose hope. To cherish the blessings already present in our lives and to help bring new blessings into being.

This year, Rosh Hashanah and Shabbat arrive together as we also mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Nearly 3000 lives were lost on that fateful day, among them my friend and colleague Rabbi David B. Cohen’s brother-in-law, Andy Alameno, who was killed at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Reflecting on this 25th anniversary, David wrote:

“Twenty five years later, I find myself returning not only to what we lost that day, but to what we believed the tragedy asked of us: to confront evil without surrendering to vengeance, to examine ourselves even when we have been wronged, and to rebuild the bonds that enable us to recognize strangers as neighbors.” (Rabbi David B. Cohen, “September 11: 25 Years On, and the Staircase That No Longer Existed,” Substack, September 9, 2026, In memory of Andy Alameno, of blessed memory.)

David’s poignant words resonated so deeply with me on this 25th anniversary that I am including them as part of my New Year’s prayer this year:

May we have the courage to confront what is wrong without allowing hatred to diminish our own humanity.

May we have the humility to examine ourselves, even when it would be easier to look only at the failings of others.

May we rebuild the bonds that connect us to one another, so that strangers might once again become neighbors.

May this New Year be bright with promise and filled with hope. May it bring us the blessings of health and strength, joy and contentment, love and laughter, compassion and courage.

Above all, may 5787 be a year of peace: peace in our hearts and in our homes, peace in our communities, peace for Israel and throughout our world.

May we enter this New Year ready to receive its blessings and determined to help bring those blessings into being for all humankind.

Shana Tova u’Metukah – שנה טובה ומתוקה.

Wishing you a good and sweet 5787!

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

The Courage to Pick Up the Phone

What happens when a conversation you’ve already forgotten keeps someone else awake at night, and they find the courage to pick up the phone?

Last night, just as I was finishing dinner, my phone rang.

Earlier this week, I shared something personal with a friend. Their response was immediate, instinctive, open and honest, delivered in that wonderfully indomitable manner that is so characteristic of them. I loved their response both for its honesty and for the spirit in which it was offered. When our conversation ended, I did not dwell on it.

Apparently, however, my friend did.

For them, the conversation kept replaying, like a movie caught on an endless loop, going around and around in their mind. The more they thought about it, the more unsettled they became by their own response.

So they picked up the phone and called.

“I want you to know that I am so sorry for my immediate, visceral response to our conversation the other day. I should have separated my own personal feelings about the situation from what I think would be right for you.”

I was deeply touched and moved by the call.

Not because I had been perseverating about our discussion, or waited for some sort of apology. I hadn’t given our words another thought. Rather, my friend had done something both difficult and profoundly beautiful. They had revisited their own words, examined them honestly, and recognized a distinction that is not always easy to make: the difference between ‘what I feel and what another person may need from me’.

Then, rather than allowing that realization to remain an internal conversation, they picked up the phone.

That is teshuvah.

We often translate teshuvah as “repentance,” but the Hebrew word comes from the root lashuv, “to turn.” Teshuvah is a turning. It is the willingness to look again at something we have said or done, to see it differently than we did in the moment, and, when necessary, to turn toward another human being and try to make it right. 

Sometimes, as I experienced last night, the person toward whom we turn may not even know that anything needs repairing.

As the Yamim Nora’im, the High Holy Days, draw near, our tradition asks each of us to engage in precisely this kind of honest reflection.

Where have my words caused hurt?

Where have I allowed my own feelings, assumptions or judgments to prevent me from truly seeing another person?

Where do I need to say, “I am sorry. I was wrong. I mis-stepped. I was not thinking?”

There is the other side to saying “I am sorry” as well: where might I need to hear those words from someone else? How do I open my heart and spirit to allow room for this to take place?

What am I carrying that I might be ready, perhaps only tentatively, to begin releasing?

Our tradition does not pretend that forgiveness is simple. Some wounds are profound. Some relationships cannot, and should not, be restored to what they once were. Forgiveness does not require us to deny pain, excuse harmful behavior or abandon necessary boundaries.

These sacred days do, however, invite us to ask ourselves difficult questions:

What burden will I continue to bear if I do not forgive?

Could forgiveness be a gateway to a life of greater peace?

Forgiveness, like teshuvah, rarely happens all at once. Sometimes it begins with nothing more than a willingness to turn: to see ourselves more honestly and to see another person with different eyes.

This Saturday evening at 6:30 pm, we will begin this sacred work together as a Mizpah community when we gather for Selichot. Our program, “Seeing Ourselves, Seeing Others,” will use two short, evocative animated films by Hanan Harchol to open a conversation about judgment, forgiveness and the work of teshuvah. We will share dessert and Havdalah before entering into the beautiful, reflective prayers of Selichot together. 

Selichot reminds us that we need not wait until Rosh Hashanah to begin.

Perhaps there is someone we need to call.

Perhaps there are words we need to say.

Perhaps there is something within ourselves we are finally ready to release.

Perhaps these days before Rosh Hashanah ask us, above all, to see: to see ourselves with greater honesty, to see others with greater compassion, to recognize where we have fallen short, to recognize where we have been hurt and, when we are able, to turn.

As Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl so beautifully teaches:

“Forgiveness is a hope and aspiration.
Forgiveness is a prayer – even for God;
maybe for all of us.” (Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl, “Forgiveness Is a Prayer,” Yom Kippur 2018, Central Synagogue, New York)

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel