spread over us the shelter (sukkah) of your peace

ופרש עלינו סכת שלומך

May our efforts in the new year spread clouds of glo­ry as we build true taber­na­cles of peace.

ופרש עלינו סכת שלומך

Spread over us the shel­ter of Your peace

The phrase is recit­ed every evening as part of the evening bless­ings. I have long appre­ci­at­ed the phrase since I learned a par­tic­u­lar melody for the phrase. While many cou­ples have the Song of Songs phrase “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” (.אני לדודי ודודי לי) inscribed on the inside or out­side of their wed­ding rings. Deb­bie and I have ופרש עלינו inscribed inside ours. The phrase is, clear­ly, dear to my heart.

In 1995 I learned from Jef­frey L. Rubenstein’s arti­cle (Judaism 43 (Fall, 1994) “The Sym­bol­ism of the Sukkah”) some beau­ti­ful imagery about the sukkah that I inte­grat­ed into the book­let I pre­pared for my con­gre­ga­tion in Ramona, CA in 1997:

Rab­bi. Eliez­er says: God made us live in real sukkot.

Rab­bi. Aki­ba says: They were the clouds of glory.

God made dark­ness a per­son­al screen; dark thunderheads;

Dense clouds of the sky were God’s sukkah round about. [Psalm 18:11–12]

Can one, indeed, con­tem­plate the expanse of clouds;

The thun­der­ings from God’s sukkah? [Job 36:29]

Then Adon­ai will cre­ate over Zion and her assem­blies a cloud…

for over all the glo­ry there will be a canopy. [Isa­iah 4:5]

Bring on the clouds Adonai!

As blan­kets to warm us at night.

We wel­come Your moist canopy over us.

The cool blan­kets act like a cloud of dew in the heat of har­vest [Isa­iah 18:4]

Dur­ing which we share a Bib­li­cal Bouquet:

In the image, the “clouds” above are formed by the words ופרש עלינו “spread over us” while the three-sided booth is formed by the let­ters of שלום,

This has long been one of my favorite cards.