The pomp and the ceremony are over. For forty days, we’ve looked inside ourselves. We’ve purified ourselves and thought about what it means to be better people. And for weeks, our synagogues have been overflowing. Jews who have no other connection to Judaism have been stirred by the music, by the solemnity, by the need to come home.

But tonight, I suspect, many of our synagogues will be empty – just the few faithful who come every week – tired, exhausted from weeks of profound prayer. Ask any Jew about the most important days of the year, and they will mention Passover and the High Holidays. But this is not how the Jewish year was meant to be.

For the rabbis of old, there was one holiday that was more important than any other – a holiday so important that it was simply called haChag, the holiday. It wasn’t Passover. It wasn’t Chanukah. It wasn’t anything that comes to mind. It was Sukkot.

In our liturgy, each of our holidays has a nickname – a phrase that reminds us why we celebrate it. Passover is the time of our freedom. Shevout is the time of redemption. But Sukkot is the only time of the year that is called “the time of our rejoicing.”

What is it that makes Sukkot so joyful? In ancient times, it was a week when the entire people travelled to Jerusalem. There were musicians and celebrations everywhere. And our tradition tells us that no matter how crowded Jerusalem became, no one lacked for a place to stay. The warmth, the community, the hospitality must have been amazing.

I suspect that, on some level, Sukkot was a release – a way of the entire nation saying, “We survived. For ten long days, the Holy One sat with the book of life open before Him, and we survived.”

But Rabbi Sacks teaches that Sukkot is about something greater – something about the sukkah itself, about the experience of living without a permanent home.

Jews have always known what it was like to have no fixed home: to know that the place you were living is just a temporary dwelling. Sukkot reminds us of our fragility, and yet our ancestors called it zeman simchtenu, the time of our rejoicing.

Somehow Sukkot decodes for us the secret of joy. Joy doesn’t come from great houses of brick or stone; it doesn’t come from what we shut out but from what we let in. Joy comes from a roof open to heaven, a door open to guests, and a heart open to thanksgiving. Ben Zoma was right when he said: who is rich? Not one who has everything he wants but one who celebrates what he has. Sukkot is one of the world’s great seminars in happiness, because it shows us that you can sit in a shack with only leaves for a roof, exposed to all the hazards of the cold, wind and rain and yet still rejoice, when you are surrounded by God and the people you love. Have that and you have everything.

Joy, he teaches, is not about having everything. It is not about being secure. Joy is about knowing that the future is radically unpredictable, but that you will be all right, because God and the people you love are with you.

The vulnerability of the sukkah somehow captures all of Judaism. We don’t assume that life will be perfect, that when we die there will be angels playing harps, welcoming us to a better world. But we believe that we can make a better world, and that we can find joy and love in creating that world together. With effort, with caring, we can create a heaven, right here on earth.

And in the end, this is our purpose. Abraham Joshua Heschel of Apte, the great grandfather of the modern Abraham Joshua Heschel, began his Torah commentary by commenting on the verse “And God called the dry land earth.” “Behold,” he said, “we see that the joy of being human comes from the ability to pour God’s kindness onto others and to share in their joy. And this is why God gathered the waters and created dry land – so that people could walk over to each other and fill the world with kindness.”

Walking over to each other, sharing a meal in a fragile structure, treating each other with kindness – these acts are more powerful than all of the ministering angels put together.

We begin celebrating Sukkot on Sunday night. And Sukkot ends with Simchat Torah – a chance to roll back the Torah, to read about dry land once again, to learn and to grow and to build even stronger communities than we built last year.

Ivdu Adonai b’simcha. Go and serve Adonai in joy!