Memento Mori and Sukkot: The Paradox of Contemplating Death and Finding Joy

Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, at least according to the song that Frank Sinatra sung back in the 1950s. While love is not a given in a marriage, love and marriage are ideally compatible. As for death and joy, they do not seem to go together at all, at least at first glance. Yet that is exactly where my thought process has been as we transition from the repentance of Yom Kippur to the joy of Sukkot. It makes more sense to think about death during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, most notably with the prayer Unetaneh Tokef. This prayer is meant to be taken as a metaphor about life and death, our mortality, and meant to inspire introspection on what we are doing with our lives. 

The metaphor goes something like this. On Rosh Hashanah, G-d determines who is going to live and who is going to die. He writes those names in the corresponding Book of Life and Book of Death. Between Rosh Hashanah and the end of Yom Kippur, we have the ability to avert or minimize the decree by recompensing, repenting, and working on becoming a better version of the self. Again, I do not read Unetaneh Tokef literally, especially since it is a poem.....a powerful poem, but a poem nevertheless. It does not take negate the motifs of our G-d's sovereignty or our limits and mortality that are so prevalent in High Holiday liturgy. 

For Sukkot, the idea of contemplating death is not immediately apparent. As a matter of fact, it took me a number of Sukkot celebrations before I connected the dots. It is true that the harvest holiday of Sukkot is also referred to as "the time of our joy" (זמן שמחתנו). The association between death and joy is not obvious, and yet it shows up in Sukkot. For one, the sukkah is a temporary, flimsy structure that is open to the sky and anything else Mother Nature throws at us. Interestingly enough, the Rabbis in Talmud (Sukkot 23) debate not whether it should be flimsy, but how flimsy the sukkah needs to be. There needs to be at least some flimsiness, but at least enough sturdiness to last for the holiday. Based on these legalistic arguments, the structure ends up being one of impermanence and fragility, both literally and metaphorically. You know what else has impermanence and fragility? Our lives. The twelfth-century scholar Rashbam believed that the sukkah reinforces the idea that our wealth and comfort come from G-d. For Rashbam, the sukkah is a reminder of the fragility of life, which by extension, includes our own mortality. 

The idea of the impermanence of life is found in another Sukkot tradition: the reading of Ecclesiastes (קהלת). After the preface in the first verse, the Book (Ecclesiastes 1:2) starts out by saying  "הבל הבלים הכל הבל". This is commonly translated as "Vanity of vanity, all is vanity." I do not think "vanity" or a translation of "futility" does justice to the word הבל. The word הבל literally means "breath." Our time on this planet is short, like a breath. Using this literal translation, we see that King Solomon's grievance is not that life is meaningless or pointless, but rather that it is but a short breath. The ephemeral and temporary nature of life is the underpinning of King Solomon's existential angst that we see throughout the Book of Ecclesiastes. 

But why bring up death at all on a festival of joy? There are Jewish practices that give us hints. One is at the end of a Jewish wedding, one member of the couple (traditionally the groom) stomps a glass and screams "Mazal tov!" The breaking of the glass is to remember the destruction of the Temple, which was symbolic of the spiritual epicenter and cohesion that the Jewish people lost. Even in our happiest of moments, we are meant to temper our joy. This is a similar thought to why we read the Book of Ecclesiastes on Sukkot. One reason for this custom is that if we give into joy as an extreme, it becomes frivolous and we lose focus on the loftier reasons for existence (Avudraham; R. Azaryah Figo). 

This leads to my second explanation: life is a mixed bag. As Ecclesiastes brings up, "To every time, there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven. A time to be born, a time to die...(Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)." There is a mixture of good and bad. Sometimes, they even get mixed together. What is the traditional Jewish garb for a groom on his wedding day? A kittel, which is a simple, white shroud. What is the traditional Jewish garb for Yom Kippur, the Holy of Holies? A kittel. What about the garb in which one is to be buried? Also a kittel. There is a similar sentiment of mixed feelings in the mourning of a loved one, known as shiva (שבעה). Shiva is mostly a sad occasion because a loved one is no longer with us. At the same time, it is a celebration of life: the impact they had on others, how they dedicated their lives, and the memories they created. It is in this paradox where I have seen chuckles and moments of laughter even in a shiva call. Life is that complex. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, truth exists in paradox. 

Speaking of paradox, this leads to my third explanation: death gives life meaning. In Judaism, morning blessings include thanking G-d for giving us the ability to discern (אשר נתן לשכוי בינה להבחין בין יום ובין לילה). As I brought up on Tisha B'Av in 2020:

If we lived happily all the time, we would have nothing with which to compare happiness. It would get old really quick. Paradoxically, we need difficult moments in life so we can better appreciate the happier moments.  

These difficult moments sadly include death. What if we were immortal? We could always put off getting something done. It would diminish our desire to get things done or to pursue relationships because "there would always be another time." The limited timeframe of our lives gives life urgency. It gives life meaning. As R. Jonathan Sacks points out, "A book that never ended would not be a book. Music that went on forever would not be a symphony. All meaning takes place within a frame. Birth and death are the frame that give meaning to life."

That is the paradox: because death gives our life meaning, it also gives our life joy. This is one of the reasons why the idea of memento mori (Latin for "remember death" or alternatively, "remember you will die") is important. Instead of running away from the idea that we are going to die, memento mori teaches us to lean into it, to meditate on it. Montaigne once wrote that la préméditation de la mort est la préméditation de la libérté, or to translate, "to practice death is to practice freedom." 

If we practice memento mori on Sukkot, I think it would enhance the reasons why we rejoice on Sukkot in the first place. To quote Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 2:11), "You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think." How much easier would it be to appreciate the harvest that Sukkot celebrates, and how much easier would it be to appreciate our material wealth, when we internalize that we cannot take it with us to our graves? How much more likely are we to enjoy the company of others under the sukkah or our loved ones when we remind ourselves that people come and go? How much more motivated are we to find meaning in the sukkah and indeed our lives when we recall that this all can end in the blink of an eye? 

That is one of the reasons I enjoy Sukkot. We are meant to find joy in spite of the tumultuous nature of life and in spite of the fragility of our own mortality. Rather than be depressed by our inevitable demise, it should inspire us to live life and give us the ability to prioritize what truly brings joy in life.