Sukkos: Jumping Into Action

This Week's Dedication

Rabbi Adi opened by dedicating this week's shiur. First, l'refuah shleimah: for Neria Leiter, Neria Dov ben Chana, who was severely injured this week in a car-ramming terror attack. We need Neria to pull out of this, and this whole class should be for a complete refuah shleimah. And second, l'zecher nishmas Rabbi Adi's uncle, Elchanan ben Moshe Yeshaya, who was niftar right on Yom Kippur; the family is in the middle of shivah this week.

Rabbi Adi is the oldest grandson in his family, and growing up in Los Angeles, his uncles, six, eight, and ten years older than he is, were basically his brothers. He slept over with them, they taught him how to play all the different sports, and they taught him how to learn. One uncle was his basketball coach, another uncle was his golf coach, and this uncle was his tennis coach. He was a dentist who went to UCLA (the reason Rabbi Adi once planned on going to dental school at UCLA himself), and just an amazing, amazing person. A little over a year ago he was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, a brain tumor. He fought very, very hard, but ultimately Hashem had different plans. It was very special that this past summer, when Rabbi Adi went to Los Angeles with his family, he went with his kids every morning and spent about an hour with him. That was really the last time his uncle was even able to speak.

Three Questions on Sukkos

We spoke about Rosh Hashanah, and we spoke about Yom Kippur. Now Sukkos is starting tomorrow night, and the idea all along has been: how can we approach the holiday with something specific in mind? We have been looking at what happens during the holidays, at the mitzvos, and through the mitzvos trying to understand what each holiday is all about and what the special time is that we are supposed to tap into. And Sukkos, Rabbi Adi said, is also a fairly confusing holiday.

One of the things we have on Sukkos is the arba minim, the four species. We take four different things, different parts of the agricultural world: a lulav (a palm frond), an esrog (a citrus fruit), an aravah (a willow branch), and a hadas (a myrtle branch), and ultimately we put these four things together. The Torah says (Vayikra 23:40):

וּלְקַחְתֶּם לָכֶם בַּיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר, כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים, וַעֲנַף עֵץ־עָבֹת, וְעַרְבֵי־נָחַל, וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם לִפְנֵי ה׳ אֱלֹקֵיכֶם שִׁבְעַת יָמִים

And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of a beautiful tree, branches of date palms, a branch of a braided tree, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before Hashem your G-d for seven days. (Vayikra 23:40)

The question is: why do we have these four things, and why are we shaking them? That is one question to highlight.

Another question is the famous question of the Tur (one of the foundational codes of halachah). We go outside and sit in these covered huts, as the Torah says (Vayikra 23:42-43):

בַּסֻּכֹּת תֵּשְׁבוּ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים... לְמַעַן יֵדְעוּ דֹרֹתֵיכֶם כִּי בַסֻּכּוֹת הוֹשַׁבְתִּי אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּהוֹצִיאִי אוֹתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם

In sukkos you shall dwell for seven days… so that your generations will know that I housed the Children of Israel in sukkos when I took them out of the land of Egypt. (Vayikra 23:42-43)

If Sukkos is in commemoration of the huts they lived in when they left Egypt and were in the desert, why do we have the timing of Sukkos right now? It should be right after Pesach; that is really when we should be celebrating it. So why is it happening now?

And one more question (Rabbi Adi said he would not get into all the questions; maybe next week we will continue). On Sukkos there is a special idea of happiness, a special mitzvah of simcha. The Torah commands about this festival (Devarim 16:14-15):

וְשָׂמַחְתָּ בְּחַגֶּךָ... וְהָיִיתָ אַךְ שָׂמֵחַ

And you shall rejoice on your festival… and you shall be only joyful. (Devarim 16:14-15)

The rest of the year, there is no mitzvah that you have to be happy. There is an idea; we see it in the tochacha (the rebuke) in Parshas Ki Savo, where the Torah says that we can sometimes be punished if we are not happy in our lives and happy in our service of Hashem:

תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר לֹא־עָבַדְתָּ אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ בְּשִׂמְחָה וּבְטוּב לֵבָב

Because you did not serve Hashem your G-d with joy and with gladness of heart. (Devarim 28:47)

But the only time there is really a mitzvah of happiness is right now, during this time of Sukkos. So what is this idea of simcha, of happiness, doing at the time of Sukkos? Those are the three questions: what are the arba minim and why do we shake them; why are we celebrating Sukkos, in commemoration of the huts after Egypt, now instead of after Pesach; and what is the idea of happiness doing right now. The answer Rabbi Adi built is based on teachings of Rav Hutner, Rav Dessler, and his rebbe, Rav Berkowitz.

From Elul to Sukkos

To put it all together, continue from what we spoke about by Rosh Hashanah and then Yom Kippur. Our life is a process, and our development as individuals and our development as Jews is also a process. It is no different right now: we just went on a journey from the beginning of Elul to Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, and the climax is Sukkos.

What happened on Rosh Hashanah? We spoke about how Rosh Hashanah is basically our business pitch to Hashem, the King: Hashem, this is how we are going to add value to Your kingdom, to the world. I have this job, I live in this place, I have this amount of athletic ability and this amount of intellectual ability, and this is how I am going to do the best that I can this coming year; therefore, You should invest in me. We spoke about how giving life is giving opportunity. That is what Rosh Hashanah is really all about.

Then comes Yom Kippur. Once we have this investment that Hashem invested in us, we have to start making sure that we have no leftover baggage from the previous year. We have to start with a clean slate. We have to make sure that we are able to work in the best way that we can possibly work. That is really what Yom Kippur is. We spoke in much greater detail about what that means, about love, and about freeing ourselves from all of those feelings in order to serve Hashem in the best possible way.

And now we come to Sukkos. Sukkos is basically jumping into action. That is what Sukkos is all about.

The Physics Tutor

Rabbi Adi gave an analogy he has given a bunch of times. When he was in YU (Yeshiva University), he took summer school one year at UCLA: calculus-based physics. It was very hard for him; that class was probably one of the hardest classes he took. People say that organic chemistry is very complicated, and that actually was not too hard for him, but calculus-based physics was much more complicated. He finally decided, after one of the chapters, that he needed to get a tutor. Now everybody is very happy to have a tutor; but back then, anybody who was super competitive twenty-five or thirty years ago did not want to admit to themselves that they needed a tutor. That was him. Eventually he realized: let me get a tutor. He thought he knew how to do the work, but every time he got to the end of an equation, he kept on messing it up. The topic was jet propulsion. And when he sat with the tutor, within thirty minutes the tutor explained the philosophy of how it works. Not just doing problems, not just getting into it; he explained it clearly. And Rabbi Adi was extremely happy, because he knew that any question that was going to be asked of him, he would be able to solve, because he understood the philosophy behind jet propulsion. The tutor said: now go start trying to solve these questions. And every single question that was thrown in his direction was not a question for him. He knew exactly what to do.

And that is ultimately what Sukkos is about.

Becoming Like Nature

Just zoom out: what is Sukkos? You are taking all these different species that exist in all different types of climates. You have the palm frond, which can exist in the desert. You have a citrus fruit that has to be perfectly curated in a great climate. You have the willow branch that lives on the banks of the river. Ultimately, we have to put this all together, hold it as one, and then, with the lulav and the esrog, with the arba minim, we do na'anuim: we shake them. Why are we shaking all these different branches and all these different things?

The reason suggested, as Rabbi Adi said, by Rav Hutner and Rav Berkowitz, is this. When it comes to human beings, as we spoke about by Rosh Hashanah, we have free will. But when it comes to nature, it is a mathematical equation. If you plant a seed in the right place with the proper soil, and you give it the right amount of water and the right amount of sunlight, it will grow. And all aspects of nature are like this, whether it is the trees, whether it is the cats, whether anything else.

So what we do on Sukkos is say: what is ultimate happiness? Ultimate happiness is when we understand who we are and what we are supposed to be doing to make ourselves and the world a better place, which we did on Rosh Hashanah; and then we remove the baggage that is going to hold us back from accomplishing what we can accomplish, which we did on Yom Kippur. And now we want to become just like nature: whenever there are problems or issues thrown in its direction, nature approaches everything exactly how it is supposed to. And that is what we want to be as well. We want to know ourselves so well that even if we do not get the right amount of sleep, and the kids are tugging on our legs, we know that our duty is to be the best father; we know that we need to go to work and be nice to everybody. So we take the four species, these parts of nature, we hold them together, and we shake with them and say: Hashem, I know myself, and I am going to be the best Adi Isaacs that I can be. Just as nature serves its purpose, I also want to serve my ultimate purpose.

And that is also why we go out into the sukkah. We are going out into the sukkah not after Pesach; Pesach is celebrating something else. Right now, after we celebrated Rosh Hashanah, after we celebrated Yom Kippur, we say: let's move out of our house, let's move into nature, let's become one with nature. We know ourselves so well that we will always try to be the best version of ourselves.

The Ultimate Happiness

And that is why there is a mitzvah of happiness right now. What is ultimate happiness? We are all the happiest we ever feel when we feel that we are succeeding and fulfilling what we want to fulfill. If we get distracted and thrown off by different scenarios that come up in our life, and therefore we are not able to be the best father, the best Jew, the best at our work, if we are not able to do that because there are a lot of other random factors, we are not happy. When are we ultimately happy? When we are fulfilling what it is that we want to do. And that is why Sukkos is the ultimate happiness: after we have thought about ourselves and who we are going to be on Rosh Hashanah, after we remove that baggage, Sukkos is about jumping into action. We put our whole plan of how we are going to live our life into reality, and then we start acting with that reality. We become the best version of ourselves. That is the ultimate happiness: when we are shaking with the arba minim, when we know who we are, when we know what we want to be, and therefore we are following that game plan.

And that, Rabbi Adi ended, is ultimately what we are praying for for Neria: that he will have the ability to continue being the greatest version of himself, and that he should have a complete, complete refuah shleimah. And it is in memory of his uncle, who really did live his fullest life in a short 56 years. He never cared about silliness; he focused only on what was important, which to him was family, Judaism, friends, and tennis. Those were the things he cared about, and he focused on them tremendously. So we should all continue praying for Neria, and continue doing good actions, actions that we want to commit ourselves to, and through that we will continue to see a refuah shleimah for Neria and only good times. Chag Sameach.