Let’s draft off the energy of Yom Kippur. We are back in person on Shabbat morning. Please join us for coffee, conversation, and community as we discuss a Norman Rockwell Sukkot.

One of Norman Rockwell’s classic paintings—it commands its own room in the Norman Rockwell Museum in the Berkshires—is a family Thanksgiving feast entitled Freedom From Want. Follow this link.

A family gathered happily together. A turkey ready to be gobbled up. Fine china. Fine stemware. Big smiles. Warmth. Home. Safety. Security. Plenty.

There is only one problem. The year of the painting is 1943. America is in the middle of World War II. After Pearl Harbor. Before Omaha Beach. By the way, the Holocaust is happening.

How are we to think about this family’s feast in the middle of World War II and the Holocaust? Is their celebration of plenty the right move morally, or the wrong move? What impact should the war and the Shoah have had on their feast? Should they have feasted as if World War II and the Shoah were not occurring (which seems to be the case)? Look at the easy smiles on their faces. Should they have canceled their feast due to the sorrows of the world? Should they have had their feast, but done some readings to acknowledge the war and the Holocaust that were both happening that very day?

This theme—how do you do daily life when the world is in tumult—is a recurrent theme for Norman Rockwell. A companion painting, also a classic, entitled Freedom From Fear, shows parents putting children to bed, domestic tranquility, parents grounding their children in the serenity of home and hearth, while the father holds a newspaper that has headlines about the war. Follow this link.

Roll the film forward to 2022. Roll the film forward to Sukkot which begins Sunday night. If we sit in our Sukkah smiling and enjoying our festival meal, eating our fine food, drinking our fine wine, making pleasant conversation, is that a problem given the problems of the world? As just one small example, the New York Times Daily catalogues the infinite misery engulfing Pakistan as a result of biblical-like floods that are causing death, devastation, and hunger on a massive scale. How do we think about enjoying our holiday when there is so much pain in the world?

What do Jewish sources teach us about navigating this tension between the world in grief and our world as sanctuary from the world in grief?