All seven days, one

makes one's sukkah into [one's] regular [dwelling] and one's home into an

occasional [dwelling]. If rains fall, at what point may one leave the sukkah?

When the porridge becomes spoiled [by rain falling into it]. [The Sages] spun a

parable: To what may this be compared – to a servant who came to pour a cup for

his master, and he poured a jug on his face.

(Mishnah Sukkah 2:9)

A question was asked of

the scholars: Who poured on whom? Come and hear that which was taught in

a braita: His master poured a jug on his face and said to him: "I do not

want you to serve me."

(Sukkah 29a)

Who poured on whom? The

the rainfall?

(Rashi ad loc)

From When Do We Mention God’s Power in

Providing Rain?

Rabbi Eliezer says: From the first day of the festival. Rabbi

Yehoshua says: "From the last day of the festival". Rabbi Yehoshua

said to him: "Since rain on the festival is a sign of curse, why mention

it at all?"

Rabbi Eliezer replied: "I

did not say we should pray for rain, but rather that we proclaim that ‘He

causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall in its season.'"

He answered: "If

so, one should always mention it!"

(Mishna, Taanit 1:1)

The end of the

matter, everything is lishma

Daniel Rohrlich

When I was a student in the USA, I lived in

a run-down building. My apartment was in terrible condition; it was surrounded

by the junked remains of cars and buses, but the rent was cheap. The landlord

never fixed anything on his property, but he did teach me how to make repairs –

construction was his hobby. Instead of fixing my apartment, he built an

additional room. The new room blocked my bedroom window. When Sukkot was

approaching, I asked him if he would mind if I took the roof off the new room;

he did not object. In that way I traded a miserable and superfluous side room for

a wonderful sukkah – and starlight in my bedroom. About a year later my

neighborhood was visited by powerful winds – a hurricane – in the days between

Yom Kippur and Sukkot. Many houses in the area were damaged by falling trees,

and the storm caused an extended electrical blackout. My sukkah, however, was

just fine. Not only that: the entire area became one huge pile of schach.

I will mention the USA and Sukkot again later in this

article, but first allow me to begin with a quote from Ibn Ezra's commentary on

Kohelet. Ibn Ezra points out apparent contradictions in the book:

It

says [both]: Better wrath than laughter and its opposite: Be not hasty with your spirit to become

wroth, for wrath lies in the bosom of fools. And also: For in much wisdom is much vexation, and its

opposite: It is better to go to a

house of mourning. And

also: And I praised joy, and its opposite: and concerning joy [I

asked], "What does this accomplish?" And also: For what

advantage has the wise man have over the fool? And its opposite: There

is an advantage to wisdom. (Ibn Ezra on Kohelet 7:3)

In my humble opinion there are no

contradictions in Kohelet. Rather, the book describes a reality which, while

not random and lawless, is unsure. While wisdom does have its advantages, there

is no guarantee that the wise will live longer or better lives than the fool. The

righteous man is the better man, but the world goes its own way and we all have

seen the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper.

This message sits well with our leaving our

homes, where we feel safe and protected, and entering the sukkah, where we are

exposed and vulnerable. By leaving our homes we actually leave a delusion. We

feel safe at home, but no house can protect us completely from robbery and

violence, or from death and disease. The departure from our homes is a step

towards disillusionment, towards an appreciation of the dangers lying in wait

for us and of the uncertainty of our existence even when we are at home and

feeling secure. Last year, for example, a neighbor came into my sukkah and

threatened to "blow-up my face" [lefotzetz li et hapartzuf],

to quote his formulation. That neighbor has not changed since four years when

he illegally built on my wall, but he never entered my house – only my sukkah.

To summarize: One message of Sukkot is that

we do not live in safety; our lives lack certainty and they pass quickly. This

message is not unique to Sukkot. All the holidays of the month of Tishrei point

to the element of uncertainty in our lives. In the Unetana Tokef prayer

we proclaimed that "man's origin is from dust and his destiny is back to

dust, at risk of his life he earns his bread; he is likened to a broken shard,

withering grass, a fading flower, a passing shade, a dissipating cloud, a blowing

wind, flying dust, and a fleeting dream (Artscroll translation)." All of

this is also true of our dwelling in the sukkah.

It is easy to admit to the vulnerability of

our lives. However, the sukkah offers a second message and one less easily

grasped. That is the message of holiness. I will employ a number of further

quotations in an attempt to clarify this second message.

The American author Henry David Thoreau wrote

his book Walden about the two years he spent living in the forest in a

kind of sukkah. He explains:

I went to the woods because I

wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts

of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I

came to die, discover that I had not lived… I wanted to live deep and suck

out all the marrow of life… to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its

lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and

genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were

sublime, to know it by experience.

Thoreau

was unwilling to settle for a second-hand life; he sought an unmediated

encounter with life. Similarly, dwelling in the sukkah is an opportunity and

invitation to encounter reality, to confront the basic facts of our temporary

existence on the face of the earth, to know not only what is good and what is

evil, but also what simply is. The Sukkot festival is an invitation to expose

ourselves to the holy source that lies beyond our passing lives. It was in this

spirit that Kohelet asks and asks again what is good for man, and find no

satisfactory answer to his question. In the end, he stops asking. He concludes

his book with a verse which we read and repeat: The end of the matter,

the totality of man. Yeshayahu Leibowitz pointed out that:

Kohelet

does not say fear God and keep His commandments, for that is good for man. Rather, he says in a demonstrative and

blatant fashion: for that is the totality of man.

Here faith and the service of God are seen as independent values, not as means

for the gain of benefit.¹

At the end of the day, dwelling in the sukkah

does not serve to satisfy our needs, but is rather practiced in order to

observe God's commandment, so that we might recognize God not in light of what

we expect from Him or have heard about Him, but rather according to the

"truth of His existence," to borrow RaMBaM's phrase.

The sukkah commemorates the clouds of God's

Glory which accompanied the Israelites for forty years in the wilderness. Those

clouds did not protect the Israelites – not from the seraf snakes, not

from plague, not from Amalek, and not from the Amorites in Horma. The clouds of

glory are an expression of the source of holiness that lies beyond our passing

lives; it is found where we are at our most vulnerable. That is to say: the

second message is not easily grasped, but it is possible to point to a link

between the two messages. The more we recognize the limits of our own

abilities, the better prepared we are to recognize God's superiority.

The celebrated New York poet Grace Shulman offers an

excellent expression of the connection between vulnerable, passing life and the

source of holiness. By way of introduction to her poem² I will

mention that the link between "change" and the "holy" is

apparently imbedded in the phrase, "to break old images," which

alludes to the destruction of idols, a holy act:

Surely as certainty changes,

As tide moves sand,

As heat sends wind to force the sea into

waves,

As water rises and returns in rain

Or circles into smoke and falls in vapor,

You are enchanted for you enter change

And change is holy.

As earth’s weight compresses rocks

Under trees over time, you enter change,

I know your face gives light as I know fire

Alters everything,

And falls rising,

Feeds and nourishes, opens and closes.

I pray to Proteus, the god of change

And proteolysis, "the end of change

Changing in the end,"

To break old images and make you new

As love is its own effect unendingly.

The

poem can be briefly restated in a paraphrase of HaRav Kook's³ words:

Through love of the world the old shall be renewed, and through the breaking of

idols the new world shall be made holy.

[1] Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Hamisha Sifrei Emunah. Keter: 195, pg. 57.

2 Grace Shulman, Days of Wonder: New and Selected

Poems (Houghton Mifflin Books), 2002, p. 10.

3 "The old shall be renewed and the new shall be made

holy." Iggrot HaRaYaH, volume 1, pg. 214.

Daniel Rohrlich

is a physicist

God's World is a World of faith, Justice, Uprightness, and Mercy

A faithful God (Devarim 32:4) – Who believed in the world and created it.

Never false (ibid) – For people did not come [into the world in

order] to be evil, but rather to be righteous. And so he says: God made

people upright, but they sought many accountings (Kohelet 7:29).

True and upright is He (Devarim

32:4) – He treats all the

world's inhabitants honestly.

(Sifrei Ha'azinu 307)

All this is obvious and clear, for God is a God of truth. It is this idea

which is embodied in the statement of Moses our Teacher, may peace be upon him,

the Rock – His work is whole; for all of His ways are just. He is a God of

faithfulness, without wrong… (Devarim 32:4). Since the Holy One blessed be He desires justice, ignoring the bad

would be as much of an injustice as ignoring the good. If He desires justice

then He must deal with each man according to his ways and according to the

fruits of his acts with the most minute discrimination, for good or for bad.

This is what underlies the statement of our Sages of blessed memory that the

verse He is a God of faithfulness, without wrong; He is righteous and just

has application to the righteous as well as to the wicked. For this is His

attribute. He judges everything. He punishes every sin. There is no escaping.

To those who might ask at this point, "Seeing that whatever the case may

be, everything must be subjected to judgment, what function does the attribute

of mercy perform?" the answer is that the attribute of mercy is certainly

the mainstay of the world; for the world could not exist at all without it.

Nevertheless the attribute of justice is not affected. For on the basis of

justice alone it would be dictated that the sinner be punished immediately upon

sinning, without the least delay; that the punishment itself be a wrathful one,

as befits one who rebels against the word of the Creator, blessed be His Name;

and that there be no correction whatsoever for the sin. For in truth, how can a

man straighten what has been made crooked after the commission of the sin? If a

man killed his neighbor; if he committed adultery – how can he correct this?

Can he remove the accomplished fact from actuality?

It is the attribute of mercy which causes the reverse of the three things

we have mentioned. That is, it provides that the sinner be given time, and not

be wiped out as soon as he sins; that the punishment itself not involve utter

destruction; and that the gift of repentance be given to sinners with absolute

loving-kindness, so that the rooting out of the will which prompted the deed be

considered a rooting-out of the deed itself.

(RaMHaL, Mesilat Yesharim

chapter 4, Silverstein translation)

The Four Species: Man,

Nation, and World

Rabbi Mani opened his discourse

with the verse, All my bones shall say: Lord, who is like You! (Psalms 35:10). This verse was said in allusion to nothing

else than the lulav. The rib of the lulav resembles the spine of a man; the

myrtle resembles the eye; the willow resembles the mouth, and the etrog

resembles the heart. David said: There are none among all the limbs greater

than these, for they outweigh in importance the whole body. This explains [the

verse], All my bones shall say.

(Vayikra

Rabbah 30)

Fruit of the tree: [This phrase appears] twice in the

tradition, where there is fruit of the tree, [and] fruit of the

citrus tree (Lev.23:40), hinting to what is written (Bereishit Rabbah 15:8): "The tree from which Adam ate was an

etrog tree."

(Baal

HaTurim Bereishit 1:29)

"Seventy Young Bulls of

the Festival for the Seventy Nations of the World"

As the dove atones for

iniquities, so Israel atone for the other nations, since the seventy bullocks

which they offer on Sukkot are only for the sake of the seventy nations, so

that the world should not be made desolate through them; and so it says, In

return for my love they are my adversaries; but I am all prayer (Psalms 59:4).

(Shir

haShirim Rabbah, 1)

"Seventy young bulls."

The bulls of the festival are seventy [in number], excepting those of Shemini

Atzeret, corresponding to the seventy nations, to atone for them, so that rain

would fall on the entire world; for [divine] decisions regarding water

are made on this festival.

(Rashi

on Sukkah, 55b)

That

and God seeks the pursued (Kohelet 3:15)

In

connection with that which is written, and God seeks the pursued –

Rabbi

Huna said in the name of Rabbi Yosef: In the future, God will exact the blood

of the pursued from their pursuers:

A

righteous man pursues a righteous man – and God seeks the pursued,

A

wicked man pursues a wicked man, or a wicked man pursues a righteous man – and

God seeks the pursued.

You

are found implying: Even if a

righteous man pursues a wicked man,

in any case: and God seeks the pursued.

Know

that it is such, for Abel was pursued by Cain, and therefore the Lord paid

heed to Abel and his offering, but to Cain and his offering He paid no heed

(Bereishit

4:4-5). Noah was pursued by [the

people of] his generation, and it is written that Noah found favor with the

Lord (4:8). Abraham was pursued by Nimrod, and it is

written, You are the Lord God who chose Abram, who brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans (Nehemiah 9:7). Isaac was pursued by the Philistines, and

it is written, and they said, "We have plainly seen that the Lord has

parties, between you and us (Bereishit 26:28). Jacob was pursued by Esau, and it is written, for the Lord has

as His treasured possession (Psalms 135:4). Joseph was pursued by his brother, and it is written, the Lord was

Egyptian master (Bereishit 39:2). Moses

was pursued by Pharaoh, and it is written, had not Moses His chosen one

confronted Him in the breach to avert His destructive wrath (Psalms 106:23). Israel is pursued by idolaters, and

it is written, the Lord chose you to be His treasured people (Devarim 14:2). Rabbi Yehudah ben Simon says in the name of

Rabbi Nehorai: The ox is chased by the lion, the lamb by the wolf, the goat by

the leopard – God said: Bring only the pursued before Me as offerings – the ox,

or the lamb, or the goat.

(Tanhuma Emor, 9)

If you enjoy Shabbat Shalom, please consider contributing towards

its publication and distribution.

• Hebrew edition distributed in Israel

  $700

• English edition distributed via email $

  100

Issues may be dedicated in honor of an event, person, simcha, etc. Requests

must be made 3-4 weeks in advance to appear in the Hebrew, 10 days in advance

to appear in the English email.

In Israel, checks

payable to Oz VeShalom may be sent to Oz VeShalom-P.O.B. 4433, Jerusalem 91043.

US and British tax-exempt contributions to Oz VeShalom may be made

through:

New Israel Fund, POB

91588, Washington, DC 20090-1588,

USA

New Israel Fund of Great Britain, 26 Enford

Street, London W1H

2DD, Great Britain

Please note that the NIF is no longer accepting donations under $100

PEF will also channel donations and provide a tax-exemption. Donations

should be sent to P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds, Inc., 317 Madison Ave., Suite 607, New

York, New York 10017 USA

All contributions to either the NIF or PEF should be marked as

donor-advised to Oz ve'Shalom, the Shabbat Shalom project.

About us

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom is a movement dedicated to the advancement of

a civil society in Israel.

It is committed to promoting the ideals of tolerance, pluralism, and justice,

concepts that have always been central to Jewish tradition and law.

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom shares a deep attachment to the land of Israel and it no less views peace as a

central religious value. It believes that Jews have both the religious and the

national obligation to support the pursuit of peace. It maintains that Jewish

law clearly requires us to create a fair and just society, and that

co-existence between Jews and Arabs is not an option but an imperative.

5,000

copies of a 4-page peace oriented commentary on the weekly Torah reading are

written and published by Oz VeShalom/Netivot Shalom and they are distributed to

over 350 synagogues in Israel and are sent overseas via email. Our web site is

www.netivot-shalom.org.il.