Are cycles boring?

D’var Torah from September 25, 2026

Sukkot

Part 1: The Sermon

I really like Judaism

I think it contains the particular healing we need for this particular moment of brokenness.

Even though this time feels scary and unprecedented, our ancient tradition seems to have just the remedies we have been needing.

Tonight, I want to explore the lost art of cycles.

Part 2: Cycles

Our modern lives lack cycles.

Or really, they lack awareness of the cycles.

Because these rhythms are all still happening. The cycle of the day, the moon, the sun, the seasons, the lifetime. They are all still there -- we have just lost touch with them.

We are too busy to slow down, too distracted to take note, and too impatient to experience how the light turns to darkness and back again.

Part 3: Sukkot

But Judaism is great at cycles. We have a wealth of practice and ritual and words to help us live within cycles.

Tonight, we arrive at the holiday of Sukkot.

Sukkot plays a lot of important roles in the cycles of our lives.

First, Sukkot celebrates the completion of the agricultural harvest. It’s the holiday where we gather the last of the grapes, olives, and figs. Fall has just begun and we relish the final drops of sweetness from summer.

Second, Sukkot is when we begin to pray for rain. We sit, eat, and sleep outside, almost tempting the sky to open above us.

And third, as we come out of Yom Kippur, we have clearly seen our mortality for what it is. Now we are finally free enough to let ourselves be vulnerable. We don’t want to be inside, hidden from each other. Instead, we want to build walls that can easily come down and a roof through which we can see the stars.

And we want everyone to come for dinner.

Part 4: Ecclesiastes

There is a tradition of reading the book of Ecclesiastes, or Kohelet, during the middle of Sukkot.

Kohelet has an interesting take on cycles that I want to share with you.

“A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven:

A time for birthing and a time for dying,

A time for planting and a time for uprooting,

A time for tearing down and a time for building up,

A time for weeping and a time for laughing,

A time for wailing and a time for dancing,

A time for seeking and a time for losing”

How nice! Everything has a time and a place. Cycles are so lovely.

But Kohelet’s tone quickly shifts…

“What value, then, can those who labor get from what they earn?”

Or in other words.. what’s the point?

Kohelet continues:

“And, indeed, I have observed under the sun:

Alongside justice there is wickedness,

Alongside righteousness there is wickedness.

God will doom both righteous and wicked, for there is a time for every experience and for every happening.””

“Utter futility—said Koheleth—All is futile!”

For Kohelet, the cycles create a meaningless sludge.

They are intensely depressing, evoking a kind of nihilism.

Nothing matters.

Or rather a kind of hedonism, “I therefore praised enjoyment. For the only good people can have under the sun is to eat and drink and enjoy themselves.”

But if you ask me, Kohelet doesn’t sound like someone who is able to enjoy life.

Part 5: Feeling stuck in the cycle

Maybe you’ve felt this way before: in a cycle in a bad way.

Going through the motions of a job, a relationship.

Unable to face another week.

Sick of hearing the same song again and again.

Feeling stuck in a pattern of hurt.

Seeing a world that is unjust become more and more so.

I can’t go through this again.

I can’t watch this happen again.

That is what Kohelet feels too.

The rhythm becomes an inescapable drone.

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So what do we make of this?

We need rhythm but we need release.

We want to find predictability, and we also need things to be dynamic.

We need cycles and we need direction.

Part 6: Teshuvah

I believe our answer lies in the paradox of Teshuvah.

Teshuva is the mysterious gravitational force that makes our Jewish cycles rotate.

Teshuvah literally means returning from the root word lashuv, to return. But when we say teshuvah we mean repentance, remedying our mistakes.

And so teshuvah means to change in a way that is returning to your core.

Changing and returning.

Moving and staying still at the same time.

Part 7: A specific teshuvah

In explaining the steps for teshuvah, Maimonides teaches that the final step in real teshuva is returning to the exact same situation, and making a different choice.

Rabbi Bahya ben Asher, another medieval rabbi from Spain, understands this process happening even across space and time. In his commentary on the purpose of the lulav, he derives 2 functions for the practice. The first is to symbolize gratitude for the harvest— pretty simple.

But the second purpose, he teaches, is to redeem Adam, the first human. Adam’s “original sin” was to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which caused humankind to fall from the Garden of Eden, and inhabit the normal world.

Rav Bahya is saying that in taking the lulav, we are recreating Adam’s moment in Gan Eden. But, rather than taking something that is not for us, we choose differently. We take what is meant for us.

What he is teaching is that the opportunity we have during sukkot is nothing short of redeeming the original sin.

When we come back to the same place, we have autonomy in shaping the cycle, not simply being shaped by it.

Part 8: Closing

We need to live within cycles.

And we also need direction, to be somewhere new and to believe that things can be better this time.

What we really seek is teshuvah, to have movement even as we come back to the same place we were before.

This sukkot, may we access our cycles, our direction, and our teshuvah.

And may we right the wrongs of our lives and of our people.