Succos - Safe Enough to Look Up

What does it mean that the sukkah is described by the Baalei Chassidus as Hashem’s embrace?

Delivered at the Mesorah Simchas Beis Hashoeva, in this short shmooze Rav Burg explores a powerful idea: real growth becomes possible when a person feels safe enough to stop protecting himself.

Drawing on Donald Winnicott’s idea of a “holding environment,” we look at the role of parents, counselors, teachers, and role models in creating the kind of space where a child can begin to discover who he really is. For many kids, school can feel like a place where they are constantly being measured. Camp can become something very different: a place where they can finally win.

The walls of the sukkah surround us. The Ushpizin come to visit. The schach gives us shade. But it also remains open enough that we can see the stars.

That is the task of chinuch: to build enough walls around a child that he feels protected, while leaving enough openness that he can still look up and discover what he is capable of becoming.