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 servant [poured for] his master, and this is the meaning: This may be compared to a servant who did not serve his master properly; similarly, [through the fact that rain falls on Sukkot] we know that Israel has not served [God] properly. Or perhaps this is the meaning: His master poured a jug on his face, as to say "Leave my presence, I do not want you to serve me" - The rainfall is the pouring of the jug, and in any case, it is an omen of curse. But the meaning of our braita is that the scholars were asked "The pouring of the jug is [comparable] to what - to the dwelling in the sukkah, or to 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, everything having been heard, fear God and keep His commandments, for that is 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 which was is already [done], and that which is [destined] to be, already was, 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 been with you, and we thought: Let there be a sworn treaty between our two parties, between you and us (Bereishit 26:28). Jacob was pursued by Esau, and it is written, for the Lord has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel, as His treasured possession (Psalms 135:4). Joseph was pursued by his brother, and it is written, the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man; and he stayed in the house of his 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.