Ulu Ushpizin: Come Up, Heavenly Guests!
An Asynchronous Guide for Inviting Mystical Guests to the Sukkah
RABBI SASS BROWN
Welcome!
We offer this guide to help you add Ammud-style Torah study to your Sukkot practice! Inside, you’ll find texts and a ritual for bringing mystical and ancestral inspiration to a Sukkot holiday meal.
Ammud’s mission is creating and cultivating a community that is for us by us where Jews of Color are able to build resilience and bring their fullest selves to Jewish learning and Torah, Ammud affirms, educates, and builds leadership among Jews of Color, supporting them to be empowered members and leaders of Jewish community and peoplehood.
Our vision is for Jewish communities and Jewish life to be made whole through inclusive wisdom and practice that is representative of our full racial and ethnic diversity as a people.
Sukkot is called Zeman Simchateinu, the Time for Our Joy. For centuries, rabbinic sages have taught that the proper joy of Sukkot is experienced through collective sharing. This means inviting guests to share a meal in the sukkah.
Inviting Ushpizing Ilayin - Supernal Guests - is a mystical practice of naming and welcoming ancient ancestors to sit at the Sukkot table and share their energy and connection to The Holy One. Ammud is excited to offer you this guide so you can learn about this mystical practice, and try it out in your own sukkah.
Chag Sukkot Sameach — Joyous Sukkot Wishes from Ammud!
The aim of this learning sheet is for you to:
• Study the origins of inviting guests to the sukkah.
• Learn how the practice evolved to include Supernal Guests.
• Practice a ritual for inviting guests who inspire you to share a meal on Sukkot.
This Guide has Text Study and a Ritual
This guide contains texts and a ritual. The texts can be studied on your own, with a chevruta, or around a table in a sukkah. We invite you to study them before completing the ritual, so that you can feel the full meaning behind inviting mystical guests into the sukkah.
For the ritual, you will need access to a sukkah. We recommend practicing the ritual with friends or family over a shared meal. If you are leading the ritual for others, you can invite them to think ahead of time: who is a spiritual, ancestral, or inspirational guest you would love to share a meal with?
If you do not have access to a sukkah, we still invite you to study this guide and read through the ritual. You can make space to reflect on the mystical guests you’d hope to sit with.
We hope that both the text study and ritual help you name and create space for joy with your loved ones this Sukkot.
Part I: Study The Origins of Inviting Guests into the Sukkah
The Torah instructs people practicing Sukkot to rejoice! There is a list of people included in the commandment:
Deuteronomy 16:14
You will rejoice on your holiday! You, your children, your male and female laborers, the Levites, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow that live within your gates.
Why this list of people?
In the ancient Israelite society, adult men who owned land had the most institutional and economic power. The list emphasizes people we can assume had fewer advantages in the society:
1. Children, who were reliant on adults for food and shelter.
2. Laborers who worked on the land or in the households either as indentured servants or permanent workers.
3. The Levites, who worked in the Temple and owned no land, relying on communal food donations.
4. The final three classes in the list are repeated throughout the Torah to represent the economically disenfranchised: the non-Israelite living in the community (stranger), the orphaned child with no adults to rely on, and the widow, without the economic stability her husband had provided.
The commandment could have been directed to the Israelites alone, to the householders, or even just the adult men. Instead, G-d actively instructs this joyous celebration to include people who likely did not have land on which to build their own Sukkah, or guaranteed food for a Sukkot feast.
From this text, our tradition has understood the joy of Sukkot as a communal practice. Rabbinic commentary builds on this idea, explaining Sukkot joy in detail:
1. Sifrei Devarim, a collected rabbinic commentary from the first two centuries CE, emphasizes the different ways people feel joy:
Text
“You will rejoice” - with every type of rejoicing.
Part I: Study The Origins of Inviting Guests into the Sukkah
Let’s reflect ...
• What are some of your favorite ways to rejoice in community?
• Are there ways to rejoice that you associate with a certain part of your family, community, or culture? Think about dances, music, foods, and celebrations that you do with a specific group of people.
A public holiday that allowed for every type of rejoicing would have relied on a certain level of cross-cultural respect. It’s quite possible that the classes of people mentioned - the indentured servants, the children, the Levites, the landowners — had particular ways of letting loose with their in-group. If there ever was a community-wide Sukkot celebration in land of the ancient Israelites that allowed for all of these groups to come together and party in the ways that felt most joyous and free to them — that was a level of multicultural appreciation we could learn from today.
2. Rambam, also called Maimonides, a 12th-century commentator who lived in al-Andalus and across North Africa, differentiates between types of joy:
Mishneh Torah, Laws of Resting on Holidays, 6:18
How does one rejoice? Give kids toasted grain, nuts, and sweets. Women should buy nice clothes and jewelry within their means. Men should eat meat and drink wine, because there isn’t joy without meat and there isn’t joy without wine.
But, when one eats and drinks, they have to feed the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, with any other very poor people. One who locks their doors and their yard, and eats and drinks with just their family, but doesn’t give food and drink to poor people and folks who are suffering, this is not the commanded joy, but rather joy of the appetite.
1. Rambam’s view of gender and material joy might not match our own today. Nonetheless, he is emphasizing a balance of communal and personal joy - to him, people should first celebrate with things that give them personal happiness. What is something material - a food, something you buy - that makes you happy?
2. Next, Rambam emphasizes the communal aspect of commanded joy. Nice clothes and expensive food might make you feel happy, but they do not achieve the holy joy of Sukkot. How do you understand the difference between “commanded joy” and “joy of the appetite?”
Rambam says to share with folks who are materially poor, and also those who are suffering (literally “people with embittered souls”). This is his suggested model for spreading communal happiness.
Part 2: Learn How the Practice Evolved to Include Supernal Guests
In later centuries, the mystical Jewish tradition of Kabbalah grew to include another type of guest: major Jewish ancestors, ritually invited to the Sukkot table.
The key kabbalistic text, The Zohar, tells the story of Rav Hamnuna inviting these guests out loud in his sukkah.
Zohar, Emor 43
Come and see: When a person sits in this dwelling (the sukkah}, in the Shade of Faith, the Shekhinah (G-d’s earthly presence) spreads her wings over them from above. Avraham and five Righteous Ones come and stay in the sukkah.
Rabbi Aba said: Avraham, five Righteous Ones, and King David stay in the Sukkah with them. This is why the Torah says, “Y’all will sit in Sukkot for seven days” ...
Rabbi Aba said: The Torah writes “Y’all will sit in sukkot for seven days,” and then it writes “you will sit in sukkot.” First y’all, then you — first for Guests, second for people of this world.
First for Guests — this is like Rav Hamnuna the Elder. When it was time for him to enter the sukkah, he would rejoice, standing right at the entrance to the Sukkah and saying “Let us invite guests and set a table!”
He would stand on his feet, saying the blessings, and say “Y’all will sit in sukkot for seven days. Sit, Supernal Guests, sit, sit, Guests of Faith, sit. He would raise his hands, joyful, and say “Happy is our portion. Happy is the portion for Yisrael, just like it says in Torah, “Hashem’s portion is G-d’s people.” Then, he would sit.
Over time, the practice developed to clarify which guests come each night. There are different orders in different regional Jewish communities, but the most common original seven, in order of appearance in the Torah, are Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Yosef, Moshe, Aaron, and David. Some texts also associate each of these guests with a particular mystical aspect of The Divine. Contemporary traditions have adapted the original seven to include seven matriarchs, or other mystical and ancestral guests.
Part 2: Learn How the Practice Evolved to Include Supernal Guests
It is important to note that the practice of inviting Supernal Guests does not override the instruction to share resources with those in need. Kaf Hachayim, a contemporary Sefardic commentary on Shulchan Arukh, a central book of Jewish law, combines the practices this way:
Kaf Hachayim on Orach Chayim 639:10
Each night, one should invite an honored poor guest to their feast, or send food to their house. On the first night, they say “This is the meal that I am giving to a poor person to honor Avraham Our Father, Peace be Upon Him, to establish the root of this practice in an upper realm.
1. Why might this rabbi emphasize that the two practices are connected - sharing with the poor people of your community and inviting these holy ancestors?
2. How might you explain the last mystical line in your own words - that we establish the root of our practice in an upper realm, or perhaps, a high ideal?
Part 3: A Ritual for Inviting Guests into a Sukkah
Use this ritual to invite mystical guests into a Sukkah. We recommend doing this as part of a meal, and if possible, with other living guests, your friends or family. You can invite historical Jewish ancestors like the patriarchs mentioned in Part 2, or you can invite others, including familial ancestors or people who inspire you.
The ritual happens in four steps:
1. Setting the special chair in the sukkah
2. Stating an intention at the entrance of the sukkah
3. A communal invitation to mystical guests
4. Inviting your guests by name
Let’s start!
Part 3: A Ritual for Inviting Guests into a Sukkah
Step 1:
Setting the special chair in the sukkah
Before the time when you plan to use this ritual to invite mystical guests, there is a custom to set a special chair for the guests. Some communities place a fancy cloak, coat, or jacket on the back of the chair, as if someone has come to sit. Others place special books on the chair. These are traditionally Jewish texts, but you can use other books that are special to you, or teach important life lessons.
As you set this chair, begin to think of who you’d like to invite as your mystical guests. Are there ancestors you’d want to share a meal with?
People from the Torah you’d hope to meet? Perhaps there’s a more recent person who inspires you deeply? In Step 4, you will get to invite these guests by name.
Step 2:
Stating an intention at the entrance of the sukkah
In the story of Rav Hamnuna the Elder, he stands at the entrance of his sukkah and says “Let us invite guests and set a table!” Based on this, we invite you to set an intention for the time you will spend in the sukkah.
The intention below uses the seven mystical realms - Sefirot - associated with the seven traditional Supernal Guests. Use this intention to state the type of energy you hope to bring into this moment in your sukkah.
“I’ve come to fulfill the Jewish ritual of eating in the sukkah, and of inviting holy guests. I intend for this time in the sukkah to be a time of (choose one or more).”
1. Chesed, kindness and love
2. Gevurah, strength and discipline
3. Tiferet, beauty and balance
4. Netzach, accomplishment and eternity
5. Hod, splendor and humility
6. Yesod, foundations and interaction
7. Malkhut, leadership and surrender
Part 3: A Ritual for Inviting Guests into a Sukkah
Step 3:
A communal invitation to mystical guests
After stating your intention, enter the sukkah and sit. Once everyone is seated, use the following text to begin inviting mystical guests. You can say it in the English, Aramaic, or both.
From Siddur Edot Hamizrach and Sefard (Southwest Asian and Chasidic prayerbooks)
Come up, Heavenly Holy Guests!
Come up, Heavenly Holy Ancestors!
Sit in the shade of Supernal Belief in the shade of the Holy Blessed One.
Ulu Ushpizin Ilayin Kadishin
Ulu Ahavan Ilayin Kadishin
L’meitav Betzila Dimhemnuta Ilaya
Betzila Dekudsha Brikh Hu
Step 4:
Inviting your guests by name
After the communal invitation, begin to invite mystical guests by name. You can invite historical Jewish ancestors like the patriarchs mentioned in Part 2, or you can invite others, including familial ancestors or people who inspire you. If you are eating with friends or family, you can go around the table, each naming a mystical guest you want to invite. Consider telling a bit about why this guest inspires you. You can use this formula:
Siddur Ashkenaz (European prayerbooks)
I
Azamin lesudati Ushpizin Ilayin Kadishin
Thank you for using Ammud’s guide for inviting mystical guests to the sukkah! We hope you learned about the origins of this practice, and felt inspired by welcoming your own guests to the table. May we all have the chance to sit in the presence of holy teachers and leaders, both living and mystical.
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