September 28, 2023|י"ג תשרי ה' אלפים תשפ"ד Sukkah in the Mikdash versus Sukkah at Home
Print ArticleAvraham calls his son in NY and says," Benyamin, I have something to tell you. However, I don't want to discuss it. I'm merely telling you because you're my oldest child, and I thought you ought to know. I've made up my mind, I'm divorcing Mama." The son is shocked and asks his father to tell him what happened. "I don't want to get into it. My mind is made up." "But Dad, you just can't decide to divorce Mama just like that after 40 years together. What happened?" "It's too painful to talk about it. I only called because you're my son, and I thought you should know. I really don't want to get into it any more than this. You can call your sister and tell her. It will spare me the pain." "But where's Mama? Can I talk to her?" "No I don't want you to say anything to her about it. I haven't told her yet. Believe me it hasn't been easy. I've agonized over it for several days, and I've finally come to a decision. I have an appointment with the lawyer the day after tomorrow." "Dad, don't do anything rash. I'm going to take the first flight down. Promise me that you won't do anything until I get there." "Well, all right, I promise. Next week is Sukkot. I'll hold off seeing the lawyer until after Yom Tov. Call your sister in NJ and break the news to her. I just can't bear to talk about it anymore." A half hour later, Avraham receives a call from his daughter who tells him that she and her brother were able to get tickets and that they and the children will be arriving in Florida the day after tomorrow. "Binyamin told me that you don't want to talk about it on the telephone, but promise me that you won't do anything until we both get there." Avraham promises. After hanging up from his daughter, Avraham turns to his wife and says, "Well Sarah, it worked this time, but what are we going to going to do next time to get them to come home for Chanuka?"
Sukkot today is a time of family, a time of joy, a time of happiness, but what was Sukkot like in ancient times? Jeffrey Rubenstein, Professor of Talmud and Rabbinic Literature at New York University, has written extensively about the celebration of Sukkot during the second Temple period. He explained that at this time, the center of this holiday was the Mikdash. Everyone came to mikdash, and there were special rituals associated with the Mikdash, from the nisuch hamayim, the water libation, the circling of the aravot around the mizbai’ach, all the sacrifices, the nightly Simchat beit hasho’evah’s, and so much more.
Of course, there was another aspect to the holiday, which was living in the Sukkah – and this had nothing to do with the mikdash. You could build and live in a sukkah even outside Jerusalem, even outside Israel. He argues, though, that the Mikdash remained the focus of the festival until its destruction and only then did the emphasis on the sukkah take effect.
What’s the difference if the emphasis is on the Mikdash or the emphasis is on the sukkah? If the emphasis is on the Mikdash, then we are talking about the here and now. We celebrate our financial success over the past year as a nation with God at the Mikdash, but we relive the history of the exodus by sitting in a sukkah. Professor Rubinstein argues that the Second Temple period emphasized the here and now and the post-Second Temple period emphasized the past because the focus was on the sukkah. And I’m wondering whether that’s true. Is it true that when we live in the sukkah we are only remembering the exodus? Or maybe it’s something more?
On the one hand, we know that over Sukkot we treat our sukkot like our homes. The Gemara in Sukkah 28b tells us that all seven days of Sukkot we make our sukkah permanent and our house temporary. How do we do that? We bring our nice items to the sukkah and we eat and drink and relax in the sukkah.
However, there is a rather famous Mishnah in Masechet Sukkah which tells us if it rains on Sukkot, then it’s a bad sign. It is comparable to an eved she’ba limzog kos l’rabo v’shafach lo kiton al panav – it’s comparably to a servant who comes to pour a cup of wine to his master and spills the pitcher on his face. What does this Mishnah indicate? That sitting in the sukkah is not simply a mitzvah to commemorate a historical event. Rather, sitting in the sukkah is equivalent to serving God, that the Shechinah, God’s Divine Presence, is actually in the sukkah and when we eat in the sukkah, it’s like we are eating a korban in the mikdash in the presence of God, as it were.
Now let us consider the following Talmudic source. The Gemara suggests that the reason why the walls of the sukkah must be at least ten tefachim tall is that mai’olam lo yardah shechinah l’mata mai’asarah tefachim, that the shechina, the Divine Presence never descended to lower than ten tefachim close to the ground. Why is that so? We can speculate the reason, but the point of this Gemara is that the Sukkah must be at least ten tefachim high to connect with the Shechinah, because the sukkah is not simply our home for the holiday of Sukkot, but the sukkah becomes the home for the shechinah.
And isn’t one of the reasons for living in the sukkah to commemorate the anan hakavod, the cloud of glory that surrounded the Bnei Yisrael when they left Egypt? Now was this cloud simply in the desert to protect us from the heat or from the snakes and scorpions? Let’s pick apart this phrase – anan & kavod – first kavod – what does it mean that the cloud is a cloud of kavod – of glory – what does that term mean? Almost every time that the word kavod is used in the Torah, it refers to kavod Hashem – the glory of God so it would stand to reason that this cloud is a cloud not just of protection – but it was a cloud that exhibited God’s shekhina – how that manifested itself I don’t know – but it’s not first and foremost an anan of protection – it’s an anan of God’s presence. And when God appears to BY – how does He appear – by the Red Sea, the Torah states kvod Hashem nir’ah be’anan – the glory of God appeared in a cloud; at Sinai God tells Moshe hinei anokhi ba ailekha b’av he’anan – I will appear to you in the thickness of a cloud & when the kvod Hashem dwelled at Sinai, the Torah tells us vayechaseihu he’anan – a cloud covered it; similarly, the Torah tells us vayechas he’anan et ohel moed - the cloud covered the mishkan ukhvod Hashem malei et hamishkan – so the glory of God filled the mishkan. As such, the cloud of glory was much more than protection – the cloud of glory was a sign that God’s shekhinah dwelt among the people. And what exactly is the function of the sukkah then – well, the two kerubim that rested upon the aron were sokhakhim b’kanfeihem al hakaporet – they acted as skhakh over the kaporet – the sukkah again covers the shkehinah – it houses the kvod Hashem. And if that’s true then isn’t the sukkah a place of hitgalut hashechina, the revelation of the Shechina, not just thousands of years ago but now? And maybe that’s why sitting in the sukkah is like a servant serving his master God and maybe that’s why the walls of the sukkah must be at least ten tefachim high, for this very reason.
What emerges then is that the big celebration in God’s house, in the beit Hamikdash, with the Simchat beit hashoevah and the nissuch hamayim, the water libation, is not the only place where we encounter God on Sukkot. We also encounter God in our makeshift homes, in our sukkot. It’s almost as if the Shechinah starts at the mikdash and spreads to our homes. And maybe the holiday of Sukkot teaches us in a most profound fashion the organic connection between our communal centers of spirituality and our homes.
There is a power that is created by the community when we are united and gathered for one purpose and one location and that is what we experience during this holiday and then we take that spirituality and bring into our homes – but not our real homes. Because in our real homes, there is structure, there is a roof over our heads, there is protection from the elements, there is an apparent feeling of security, so we don’t bring the spirituality of the mikdash to our homes, but we bring it into our sukkah, a place where we realize only too well that at any time, we can be forced from our homes and our existence in these homes is only by the grace of God. And maybe if we live for an entire week going from Mikdash to Sukkah and then back to Mikdash and then back to sukkah – for seven days straight, then we prepare ourselves for another year with a purpose, with a feeling of the importance of our communal spiritual centers providing the spiritual energy and oxygen that is so necessary to bring God into our homes on a daily basis.
And maybe what we should consider as we spend these days going from shul to sukkah back to shul back to sukkah is how to really connect these experiences and not just on Sukkot but how we connect from shul to home back to shul to home on a regular basis. What’s the classic question when you come home from shul? What’s new? What happened in shul? For some people, shul is an opportunity to catch up with other people, to hear the latest news, maybe even gossip, God forbid? In the spirit of Sukkot, let’s work on a paradigm shift, and not use shul as simply a social outlet. Let’s use shul for what it’s intended to be – a place to connect with God, through our tefillah, and through the Torah – either the Torah reading or the drasha or other shiurim that we learn in shul. Every time Rabbi Nechunya Ben Ha’Kanah left the beit midrash, he would say a prayer. Maybe that’s a good model. Maybe before we leave a place of holiness, we reflect. Maybe before we leave shul every day, we ask ourselves, what did I gain from this experience, how am I a different person as a result of this experience? And then we come from the shul to the home armed with this reflection, we share these reflections in our homes and then we bring the God of the mikdash, the God of the mikdash m’at, into our homes. The next time someone asks us, “What’s new in shul,” let’s consider an initial reaction to be, “I have a nice davening,” or “I felt connected because of this,” or I learned this piece of Torah, or I was inspired because of this. Let us utilize this holiday to train us to bring the shechina of our mikdash into our homes.