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There’s No Place Like Home: Finding Belonging in the Sukkah
By Avital Kadosh
“There’s no place like home.” It may be one of the most recognizable lines in movie history. After a long and extraordinary journey through Oz, Dorothy discovers that what she wanted most was not somewhere new, exciting, or magical, but to return to the place and people she called home. There is something deeply fitting about thinking of Dorothy as we enter Sukkot, because Sukkot asks us to do something rather strange: leave the comfort of our homes and spend time in a temporary one. Perhaps, like Dorothy, we sometimes have to step outside of home in order to understand what makes it home in the first place.
Of course, pop culture has given us plenty of homes that we recognize almost as well as our own. For ten seasons of Friends, Monica’s purple apartment was the center of the characters’ world. People moved in and out. Relationships began and ended. Jobs changed, marriages happened, babies arrived. But everyone kept coming back to that apartment. In the final episode, the friends leave their keys on the counter and walk away from the empty space. The apartment that had seemed so central to their lives was, ultimately, temporary. What they had built inside it was not.
That distinction feels especially meaningful on Sukkot. A sukkah is intentionally impermanent. Its walls do not offer the security of our homes, and its roof must leave us exposed enough to the world outside that we can see through it. And yet, for seven days, Jewish tradition asks us not simply to visit the sukkah but to dwell in it. We eat there. We celebrate there. We welcome guests there. We take this obviously temporary structure and do all of the things that turn a space into a home.
Maybe that is because the most important things we build inside our homes were never made of wood, brick, or drywall. Dorothy’s journey through Oz is sustained by the companions she meets along the way. Monica’s apartment matters because of the people who gather around the table. And a sukkah becomes meaningful when we fill it with family, friends, neighbors, and guests (ushpizin). Again and again, the stories we love remind us that home is not simply where we live. Home is where we are known, where we belong, and where someone has made room for us.
There is vulnerability in that idea. Buildings can give us the illusion of permanence: strong walls, locked doors, a roof overhead. Sukkot asks us to spend a week without that illusion. We sit beneath the s’chach and acknowledge that much of what makes us feel secure can change. Our circumstances change. Our children grow. People move. Communities evolve. The places that once held enormous chapters of our lives eventually belong to someone else. But impermanence does not make those places—or the relationships created within them—less meaningful. If anything, knowing that our time together is limited gives us a reason to be more present while we have it.
Perhaps that is one of Sukkot’s lessons: home is something we build for one another. The sukkah reminds us that we do not need perfect walls or permanent circumstances to create belonging. We need a place at the table. We need people willing to enter, and people willing to welcome them. We need the courage to keep building and loving even though nothing we build in this world lasts forever. There may be “no place like home,” but Sukkot reminds us that home was never only a place.
This Sukkot, may we build homes wherever we find ourselves—homes filled with laughter, generosity, memory, and people who know they belong. May we recognize the people who have created that kind of home for us, and may we be brave and generous enough to create it for others. And when the walls around us feel temporary, may we remember that what we build within them can endure long after the structure itself is gone.
Moadim L’simcha: wishing you times of joy this Sukkot season!
Avital Kadosh
Senior Director, Jewish Community Life
Reelz with the Rabbi: Sukkot Edition
Learn More About Sukkot!
Check out the links below for Sukkot articles, videos, and even a specially curated Sukkot/Simchat Torah playlist from Avital!