Succos - Safe Enough to Look Up

<p>What does it mean that the sukkah is described by the Baalei Chassidus as Hashem’s embrace?</p><p><br /></p><p>Delivered at the Mesorah Simchas Beis Hashoeva, in this short shmooze Rav Burg explores a powerful idea: real growth becomes possible when a person feels safe enough to stop protecting himself.</p><p><br /></p><p>Drawing on Donald Winnicott’s idea of a “holding environment,” we look at the role of parents, counselors, teachers, and role models in creating the kind of space where a child can begin to discover who he really is. For many kids, school can feel like a place where they are constantly being measured. Camp can become something very different: a place where they can finally win.</p><p><br /></p><p>The walls of the sukkah surround us. The Ushpizin come to visit. The schach gives us shade. But it also remains open enough that we can see the stars.</p><p><br /></p><p>That is the task of chinuch: to build enough walls around a child that he feels protected, while leaving enough openness that he can still look up and discover what he is capable of becoming.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>