Look at the houses around you. Steel doors. Bars on the windows. Security cameras on every corner. Alarm systems, gates, intercoms. We call these things "home", but if we are honest, they are a warning light. They tell us that we live in fear.
And because of that fear, the biggest dream of almost every person on earth is to buy or build a home of their own. Not only for comfort. For safety. A home feels like protection from a world we do not trust.
Once a year, the Torah asks the Jewish people to do something that sounds crazy: leave that home. Go outside. Live for seven days in a hut with a roof of branches, where you can see the stars. This is the festival of Sukkot, and it may be the most important message for every Babylon Survivor.
The sukkah: a declaration of trust
"You shall dwell in booths for seven days... so that your generations will know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt" (Leviticus 23:42-43). The Sages explain that during Sukkot we "leave the permanent dwelling and sit in a temporary dwelling" (Sukkah 2a).
Why? Because the sukkah is a declaration: we do not live because of concrete walls. We live because of Divine providence. For forty years in the desert, the people of Israel had no houses at all. They were protected by the Clouds of Glory, fed by manna from heaven, and they lacked nothing.
A palace can fall in one moment
People can build any palace they want in order to feel safe. But the Jewish people know that above every wall there is a Hand. When Korah rebelled in the desert, "the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, with their households" (Numbers 16:32). The ground itself can open under the strongest house. If God decides it is time to take back the keys, no steel door can stop Him.
King David said it in one line: "Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain" (Psalm 127:1).
Think about what happens when a house of bricks is destroyed by a storm, an earthquake or a war. For the person who lived there, it can feel like the end of the world. Even with insurance, the heart breaks. Now think about a sukkah. If a storm knocks it down, nobody cries. Within a few minutes it stands again. That is the secret of the "fallen Sukkah of David" (Amos 9:11): what is built on faith can always rise again.
Why we still have no home: the house of God comes first
For a Babylon Survivor who rents, who works hard and still cannot buy a home, and who also believes in God, the absurdity hits hard. But there is a deep answer in Jewish thought.
The Midrash teaches that the purpose of creation is that God desired "a dwelling place in the lower worlds" (Midrash Tanchuma, Naso 16): a home for the Divine Presence here, in our physical world. The Temple in Jerusalem was that home. Today it is not standing.
So ask yourself honestly: if God still does not have a house here, who are we to receive one before Him? Our longing for a home is really a reflection of a bigger longing: for the Holy Temple, the one house where heaven and earth meet. When that house is rebuilt, every other home will find its place.
The greatest party in history was in the Temple
Many Israelis love nature festivals: long gatherings of up to a week, with music, dancing, simple tents and a huge community under the open sky. Almost everyone who has been to one comes home with the same question: why can't life look like this? Why did we make everything so complicated, when we are happiest with the most basic things: nature, music and people?
The answer is that this feeling is very old. During Sukkot in the Temple, the people of Israel celebrated the Simchat Beit HaShoeivah, the Water-Drawing Celebration. There was music all night, torches, dancing sages and singing crowds. The Talmud says: "Whoever did not see the joy of the Water-Drawing Celebration never saw joy in his life" (Sukkah 51a). The original festival of the soul was not in the desert. It was in the courtyard of the Temple.
Sukkot is a festival for all nations
Here is something many people do not know. The prophet Zechariah says that in the future, all the nations of the world "will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to celebrate the festival of Sukkot" (Zechariah 14:16). Sukkot is the holiday of the whole world.
Sinai for all humanity
When the people of Israel stood at Mount Sinai, they had an experience no nation had ever had. The Talmud teaches that at every word God spoke, their souls left them, and they were brought back to life with the dew of resurrection (Shabbat 88b). It was, in a sense, a collective near-death experience: millions of people at once, seeing one truth, with one heart.
We believe that a moment like this is coming for all of humanity. The prophet promises: "I will turn to the peoples a pure language, so that all of them call on the name of the Lord and serve Him with one accord" (Zephaniah 3:9). When everyone speaks one language and knows one truth, there will be no more wars. "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and they shall not learn war anymore" (Isaiah 2:4). Humanity will become one huge community that never stops being amazed by the love and unity of the new reality.
When the curse of the ground is lifted
After the first sin, God told Adam: "Cursed is the ground because of you; with hard labor you shall eat of it" (Genesis 3:17). Since then, people and land have been fighting each other. We build walls against nature, and nature breaks our walls.
In the days of redemption, that curse will be lifted. In such a world, who will need a luxury villa, or even an apartment? The wild nature that God created will be good enough for us, just as it was in the Garden of Eden. No steel doors, no bars, no cameras. Only open skies, like the roof of a sukkah.
The seventh millennium: the great Sabbatical year
The Talmud teaches that the world exists for six thousand years, and the seventh millennium is like a great Sabbath (Sanhedrin 97a). Just as the land rests every seventh year in the Shmita, the whole world will rest in the seventh millennium: the longest Shmita of all, a Garden of Eden on earth.
This is the true goal of the Unplug Society. Not only to put down our phones, but to prepare humanity for the entrance into the seventh millennium: to unplug from the fear, the concrete and the race, and to remember that the only house that really matters is the Holy Temple, where all of us will come to celebrate real life.
How to live this now
- Build a sukkah this year, or visit one. Sit inside it and look up at the sky through the branches.
- Notice your fear. Every lock and every camera is a reminder to ask: where does my real security come from?
- Celebrate simply. Nature, music and community are not a vacation from life. They are a taste of the life that is coming.
- Pray for the Temple. Whatever your background, you can hope for a house of prayer for all peoples (Isaiah 56:7).
Wear the vision with the Third Temple snapback, the Holy of Holies cap or the Unplug Society hoodie. Next year in Jerusalem, in the house of God.
Babylon Survivor is a Jewish streetwear brand with a message for every nation. Every design is made to order and ships free worldwide. Read the story behind the name or explore the collection.