by Rabbi Elan Mazer
Sukkot is definitely the hardest Jewish holiday to explain. First, the customs of the holiday are stranger than those of the other holidays; sitting in huts, and waving produce seem like actions that are difficult to be made into a meaningful religious experience. Furthermore, a look at the reasons that the Torah gives for these customs does not clear things up. The Torah (Vayikra 23) tells us that the reason that we must sit in a sukkah for seven days is to remember the fact that Hashem sat us in sukkahs when we were in the desert on our way out of Egypt. This seems like a strange thing to celebrate and, at most, mundane compared to our other holidays. On Pesach we celebrate redemption from Egypt, our freedom and our birth as a nation; on Shavuot we celebrate the revelation at Sinai and the receiving of our Torah, the constitution and life-blood of our nation. And Sukkot is to commemorate us sitting in booths in the desert? That doesn’t sound so inspiring.
Secondly, the timing of this holiday needs to be understood. Why does Sukkot come right after the High Holidays? According to the Torah (ibid.), Sukkot is the holiday of happiness, with an emphasis on joyous celebration; why does it immediately follow the solemn days of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur? Moreover, the stated reason for this holiday happened after the exodus, so why not have Sukkot follow Pesach?
To answer these questions, we will explore the other places where the Tanach mentions “sukkah”, not in the context of the holiday. The sukkah appears for the first time after Yaakov met Eisav and his four hundred men, and came out unharmed; the Torah (Bereishit 33) tells us that he went and built sukkot, and then the Torah continues on with the story of Dina in Schem. This seems very random – why does the Torah feel the need to tell us what type of structure Yaacov used? Next, we find that Sukkot is the name of the first place where the Jews stopped after the exile from Egypt (Shmot 12).
Then, much later in history, during the return to Zion after the Babylonian exile, the Tanach (Nechemia 8) tells us that the Jewish people built sukkahs, which they had not done since the first time that they entered the land of Israel, in the time of Yehoshua Bin Nun. The Gemara in Eirichin (32b) asks the obvious question – how could it be that this was the first time that sukkahs were built since the time of Yehoshua; did King David not sit in a sukkah? The Gemara answers that, here, the sukkahs are symbolic, and represent the fact that upon their return from the Babylonian exile, the leaders of the Jewish community asked God to remove the drive to worship idols. Their prayers were answered, and this event protected them like sukkahs.
This recollection explains to us why we don’t have any interest to worship idols today, while in the time of Tanach, idol worship was rampant. In addition, it shines new light onto how we understand the concept of “Sukkah”. One could imagine that the Jews who were redeemed from the Babylonian exile might be a little bit skeptical; what will stop this redemption from ending in another exile due to rejecting God and worshipping idols? Therefore, the leaders asked God to remove the root of the problem – the drive to worship idols. They felt that it was not enough to be saved from exile, they wanted it to last.
In the Tanach, this protection from future problems is called building sukkahs. This explains why Yaacov built sukkahs after being saved from Eisav – he took measures to ensure that his redemption would last. And when the Jews were redeemed from Egypt, the first place they went to was Sukkot.
This gives us enough background to answer our second question, why does Sukkot fall right after Yom Kippur? On Yom Kippur we are absolved from all our sins, and freed from all the mistakes that we make throughout the year. We are given a second chance. But this is not enough – we don’t want to just be forgiven, we want it to last. We want the second chance to be a successful one, and therefore we need to build sukkahs.
This answer is good, but does not entirely suffice. First of all, it doesn’t seem to fit with the Torah-reason for Sukkot which is to remember our time in the desert. Secondly, how does sitting in a hut help Yom Kippur last?
In his commentary on the Torah (Parshat Vayishlach), Rav Hirsh expresses a very profound idea. He says that there are two parts to our redemption from Egypt. The first is the redemption itself; there we realized that Hashem is our Savior, that when we are in trouble Hashem will be there for us. The second part is the time we spent wandering in the desert; there Hashem took care of us, He gave us Mann to eat, water to drink, and clothes to wear, and there we realized the fact that God is not just our Savior but also our Provider. Hashem is a part of our everyday life; he is the source of our life, our health, our livelihood. This is why on Sukkot, we celebrate the fact that God sat us in sukkahs – he provided for us then, and continues to provide for us every day. Sukkot is celebrating the mundane, the day to day relationship that we have with Hashem.
The Gemara in Masechet Sukkah (28b) tells us that there is a need to make the sukkah our dwelling place for the holiday. Therefore we must bring in a table, a bed, chairs and dishes, and we should eat, drink, sleep, and even “hang out” in the sukkah. On sukkot, all the things that we do every day – the mundane parts of life – become a mitzvah. When done in the sukkah, eating, sleeping, drinking, talking with friends and family, is a mitzvah. The best way to celebrate the fact that Hashem is our provider is by doing Mitzvot with the everyday part of life, by relating to God through the ordinary.
This is also the perfect way to concretize what we achieve on Yom Kippur. On Yom Kippur we remove ourselves from material life, we don’t eat or drink, or wear leather shoes. We aim to create an angelic atmosphere in order to cleanse ourselves and stand before God. But Yom Kippur ends, we break the fast as soon as the shofar is blown, and we go back to regular life. How can we take Yom Kippur with us? Sukkot is the perfect solution, where regular life becomes a religious experience. The same eating and drinking from which we needed to withhold now become the way in which we connect to Hashem. The goal of Sukkot is to take the spiritual experience of Yom Kippur and bring it down to the reality in which we live. The holiday commemorating God’s hand in providing for our everyday needs is the perfect time to take the religious experience of Yom Kippur and make it part of our everyday routine.
Sukkot demonstrates the fact than we don’t need to live in two separate worlds; our religious experience and everyday life can be harmonized to the point where we see God in everything we do. This synthesis of worlds is the pinnacle of our happiness, a new perspective on life that we will carry with us for the rest of the year.
