We've made it: the third event of the Fall 5772 Spiritual Triathlon.
After spending the month of Elul in training for the Triathlon through self-reflection, self-assessment, and prayer, with Sephardim waking up early to say Slichot, and Ashkenazim daily trying to awaken their hearts with the sound of the Shofar...
...After the two days of Rosh Hashana, with double the normal Shabbat-hours in synagogue, digging deep to let the voice of the Teruah in, celebrating the year to come with multi-course meals...
...Finally, Yom Kippur -- one would think this would be the culmination, with its physical rigor of praying while standing for long periods of time in thin-soled shoes, sitting down, standing up, sitting down, standing up, and all the while fasting. What could possibly top this steep 40-day climb to Yom Kippur? Could there be anything higher than standing like angels before G!d, with no food, no drink, and praying for the majority of a 24-hour period? What mitzvah could possibly mark the pinnacle of this process???
Sukkot.
After all the early rising, the sitting, the standing, the praying, the fasting, the sitting, the standing...The mitzvah that crowns them all is literally just to be in the sukkah.
"Dwell in it the same way you would in your own house."
-Sukka 26a
I don't know if you can spot a good deal when you see one, but this is a good deal! Eating in the sukka is a mitzvah. Drinking is a mitzvah. Even sleeping is a mitzvah (we don't make a bracha on sleeping only because one cannot control precisely when he will fall asleep).
Not that one should do this often, but looking at it from a business perspective: we can understand G!d "paying" us for educating our children, for overcoming our egos and giving charity, for controlling ourselves from gossiping -- all of these require effort, and one can begin to grasp why the Alm!ghty values them. But what is the "value added" by us eating and sleeping -- doing what we would be doing anyway -- in a designated space?
If we keep our mental kettle on the fire a little longer, we will begin to reveal hidden depths of the Sukka experience...you see, there is a distinctive feature of the mitzvah of Sukka which allows for what we've described until now. A Sukka is essentially a space. It is one of two mitzvot we have today in which one is physically inside the object of the mitzvah. A Talit is wrapped around the majority of one's body, so it doesn't quite cut it. A mikva, on the other hand, requires one's full body to be immersed. However, it is functionally slightly different from a sukka in that one immerses in the mikva in order to become pure, whereas, "immersion" in the sukka is a mitzvah and therefore an end onto itself -- making the mitzvah of sukka entirely unique.
On Rosh Hashana, the primary mitzvah is to "remember the shofar," to go to a place before time and space -- to see the world and oneself a priori from Hashem's perspective -- to tap into the primordial cry of the shofar. It is a "Rosh," a "head," the nascent beginnings of new thoughts for a different, better year.
On Yom Kippur, one is in a space of time. Yom Kippur is called the "Day of One" by the midrash, connoting a unity of the day unlike any other (Bereishit Rabba 3:8). It is a sea of prayer and introspection from beginning to end. It is the only day like it in the Jewish calendar. With trepidation, we step in one side of the day hoping to come out on the other side changed by the encounter. The day itself brings renewal for those who tap into it (Yoma 85b).
Finally, during Sukkot, what began 2 weeks prior as sublime, even non-verbal thoughts during the blowing of the shofar has evolved into the physical space of the Sukka in which we dwell for 7 days making it a space-time of a mitzvah.Math-science jargon is nice, but what does it mean?
It means the following: the currents of time pull us inexorably towards the next minute, hour, day, month and year, as our professional, social, and personal calendars fill up with things to do. When we finally arrive at the event or meeting that was planned for weeks or months in advance, we find ourselves texting or e-mailing about the next thing on the agenda. Our successes can similarly not be savored while salivating for the next success. We're biting into lunch and thinking about what we're having for dinner. Technology, which makes up such a large chunk of our lives is the same way -- the day we buy the iPhone 4 is the day rumors surface about the iPhone 5. This is not just a critique of our times; the modern world simply brings into high-contrast this aspect of human nature to be swept out of the present into the future -- moment by moment.
In spirituality, this phenomenon may even be more pronounced. Because spirituality, by definition, cannot be seen, heard, or touched, the tendency further diminished to "stop and smell the roses," but instead to run to the next conquest. This is in turn even more of a problem because spirituality and meaning, of all things, demand our contemplation and internalization the most...
Rosh Hashana teaches us that we need to be woken up from the outside. On our own, we get stuck in old scripts and need to be startled into making a fresh start.
From Yom Kippur we learn that our high-flying thoughts on Rosh Hashana need commitment -- time needs to be set aside for contemplation; a person needs to literally speak out mistakes he has made in order to leave them behind; one needs to resolve within himself to make changes. All of this is just to achieve mental clarity. But even mental clarity is not enough.
Finally, at Sukkot, at the summit of the mountain, one needs to stop. Stay in that space! Don't run off anywhere! Sure, you see more mountains now that you're up there, but stay a while! One needs bottle the clarity and inspiration he has and build it into a place in which he can live in it and absorb it. This is what we say just before beginning the evening prayer:
ופרוס עלינו סוכת שלומך ותקננו מלכנו עצה טובה מלפניך
~
...Spread over us the Sukka of your Peace-Wholeness,
and fortify, Our King, the good counsel [we've gleaned] from You...
An idea takes time to get into one's head, but it takes even longer -- marinating in it experientially, for it to filter into his heart.
To do this we have enjoy the moment "ושמחת בחגך" "Rejoice in your holiday" (Dvarim 16:14). This is another mitzvah of Sukkot. Joy is the feeling of bringing thoughts into action (Gur Aryeh, Shemot 15:1), which hopefully, between Rosh Hashana and Sukkot is exactly what one has done. And, of course, joy is not only the result of this process, but like a good opening joke to a speech, it serves to further open the pathways of our hearts for spirituality to enter.
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Based on Rav Dessler's Michtav MeEliyahu II p 106-7.
