Ya‘arot devash (Honeycombs)

Sermon of Ethical Rebuke Preached . . . between New Year’s Day and the Day of Atonement, 5505 [1744] to the Congregation of Metz

The Meaning of the Sukkah: Exile, for the Whole World Is Only a Temporary Dwelling

The Torah advises us on Sukkot, which is the end of the season of repentance, to accept exile upon ourselves and to consider the entire universe to be a fleeting shadow. Therefore, the Torah commands us to leave our permanent dwelling, and dwell in a temporary one, to show that we are sojourners in the land, with no permanency, and our days are like a shadow, like something that appears and perishes over a single night, that disappears at the mere blowing of the wind. What benefit is there for human beings in all the toil that they do under the sun? Throughout their lives they have their eyes turned heavenward to God, as the sages taught us that the sekhakh [the thatching used to cover a sukkah] should be made in such a way that the stars can clearly be seen through them. And one should direct one’s heart to heaven, so perhaps God will have compassion over one who is brokenhearted and poor, and who knows the lowness of one’s own state, and knows that all one’s time on earth is short and meager every day. Who is it that can escape the vicissitudes of time and the changes of the days? And if one is conscious of this, God will have compassion over the poor soul, and will care for dust and ashes.

And this is deep advice for how to conduct oneself during the seven days of Sukkot, for the divine judgment is still suspended until Shemini Atzeret [a one-day holiday at the end of Sukkot], yet we should rejoice, and feel secure that the judgment will end up good, due to God’s mercy. This is advice for everyone, for the seven days of the festival. However, one who trembles at the word of the King, the King of the Universe, should have this conceptual sukkah not only during the festival of Sukkot, but also the entire year: one should view everything as a temporary dwelling, and live in the shade of the sukkah, and leave the idea of permanent dwellings, and view everything through the eyes of a mere sojourner and guest, and look up to the stars, to place trust in the Lord, and not build luxurious stone houses and regal palaces with floors of various types of marble, and similar earthly pleasures, which expand one’s sense of comfort, and lead to excesses—lust, and greed for money, and various permitted and forbidden actions, even attacking other people for their possessions—one comes to do any action, as long as it is for the purpose of adding to one’s home, one’s mansion. And thus does one’s heart become haughty and proud, and one forgets God, one’s maker.

How good and fitting were the instructions of Jonadab ben Rechab (Jeremiah 35:6) to his descendants, that they should never build houses, but rather live in tents, temporary dwellings, sometimes here and sometimes there. This is also how our ancestors lived; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were tent dwellers. This is what enabled them to have such long lives; for they had no need to worry that fires would destroy their palaces, nor did they fear the sound of the enemy, or famine, or plague, for they could quickly pull up their tent strings and pegs, and travel from one nation to another. This was what Balaam praised, when he saw them dwelling in tents in the wilderness, and said: How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob (Numbers 24:5)—your tents, for we are tent dwellers, like the tents of Kedar; and thus we are like the curtains of Solomon, and happy is our portion in this world and the next.Introspection All Year Round

Introspection All Year Round

But when we live in houses of hewn stone and solid materials, then the stones of our houses testify against us, telling us that we are causing affliction in the house, making it a house of robbery and haughtiness and lust and desire, where the demon Lilith nests and finds a home, and she sends out her arrows in various directions. This is especially true for those who build houses without justice and encroach on the boundaries of the poor—about such people, it is said that their houses are their graves. Consider how the glorious divine presence dwelt in a tent, the mishkan, made of planks and curtains, and lasted this way in the wilderness and also in the Land, for it moved from tent to tent, from the wilderness to Gilgal to Shiloh to Nob to Gibeon, and lasted 480 years. On the other hand, Solomon’s Temple, which was built of precious stones, lasted only 410 years, and ended up as a fiery ruin, due to our great sins. Then there was the Second Temple, which was destroyed multiple times over the Greek era; even though Herod rebuilt it, it nonetheless lasted a grand total of only 420 years.

The verse alludes to all this in its wording: In sukkot shall ye dwell for seven days (Leviticus 23:42)—this is the general rule for everyone, which is sufficient to fulfill the law of the holiday. But every ezraḥ, that is, the saintly people of the Israelites, who are called ezraḥim after Abraham, who was called the Ezraḥite, who came from the other side of the river—these people should dwell in sukkot always, without taking any break or time off, for they should always dwell in sukkot, and never stop: that is, they should consider the entire universe a temporary dwelling, as we have said; for it is so good for us to do so. Moreover, the sukkah alludes to the idea of Torah, for just as the sukkah is the shade of faith [tsela de-mehemanut], so is the Torah the shade of faith. And this is why Solomon exclaimed: I have desired and dwelt in His shade (Song of Songs 2:3)—this is the shade of Torah and the shade of the sukkah.

Concern for the Holiness of the Sukkah

And therefore, one should sit and study Torah in the sukkah, and not have a big party where men and women, young and old, and brides and grooms mix together for obscene and cynical conversations, and lustful thoughts—woe to the ears that hear such things and the eyes that see them, for they take the shade of the sukkah, the shade of faith, and turn it into an evil shade, the shade of demons and destructive angels, goat-demons prance around in it, and it is a corrupt sukkah, through which one cannot fulfill the precept! For the sukkah is meant to have the Lord’s cloud upon it—and although it is not visible, it is nonetheless clear and true that whoever sit in the sukkah for its proper purpose, and study the Torah, and rejoice in the festival and its precepts, and the in the joy of the festivals, then the Lord’s cloud hovers over it; any eye that sees this can confirm it. But one who spends one’s time in the sukkah in mockery and sin and iniquity removes the cloud, and it turns into the morning clouds of inanity from the side of evil (sitra aḥra); and about this it is said: the cloud is gone and departed (Job 7:9). But the main point of the sukkah is Torah.