I am a Sukkah Jew. In whatever land and whichever century I reside, I will be a temporary resident living in a temporary dwelling – a Sukkah. The roof over my head will be as frail as might be the goodwill of my host country. Therefore, ready and packed at the front door will always be my one piece of luggage ready to take – my tradition.

I may have bank accounts, thriving businesses, and admired professions. But those frills will not buy love, respect, honour -nor permanency. I have been sentenced to two thousand years of wandering – the mark of Cain.

Or have I?

Just as rain transforms a desert into a garden, so have I planted seeds of civilization and values in the parched soil of Africa, Europe, the Americas, and more. The yellowed sands have given way to greenery wherever I have ploughed that country’s soils. I don’t leave a signature. I just move on. That has been the way of Jewish history since the one and true ‘catastrophe’ – the destruction of the Temple by the descendants of Eisav. And exacerbated now by the harrowing echo of that destruction by the descendants of Yishmael.

Most recently the footsteps of Moshiach have begun to reverberate throughout the world – that world that I traversed for many centuries. Changes are afoot. Amazing advances in the sciences. Magical evolutions in technology. Unbelievable realignments and transformations in the international arena. True, alongside these we also witness confusion, societal convulsions, the greying of sexual identities, psychological insecurity (‘wokefulness’), and generational upheaval. Yet, as predicted, Moshiach is a binary development – akin to Gog and Magog in all arenas of life.

Once again, I, a mere Sukkah Jew, am thrust into the eye of storm. My ancestral home, Eretz Yisrael, is again the crossroads of military eyes, if not boots on the ground. The country, “whose G-d’s eyes are focused on from the beginning of the year to the end of the year”, is now the millennial morning star rising in the eastern sky and will light up a new era in world history.

That is when I will finally unpack my small bag that I carry around with me, seeding the cultures, societies, religions, that my wanderings have spawned.

Our small, frail, weathered Sukkah, has stood for two thousand years, while the towers of glorious cultures and civilizations have fallen, their treasures lost, and wisdoms withered, ceasing to be. But the unpretentious and humble Sukkah will continue to be.