B"H

THOUGHTS FOR SUKKOS

Dear Friends:

We are now at the culmination of all our Yomim Tovim.  Sukkos is the pinnacle of our holidays.  What does it mean?

The holidays have a progression that dovetails with the spiritual development of a Jew.  By understanding the sequence, we can attempt to make the most out of our Yomim Tovim... and ourselves!

Pesach is physical liberation.  We as a nation had sunk to the forty-ninth level of impurity in the most impure nation in the world.  G-d took us out of this pit, but that was just the beginning.  We were physically liberated, but to fulfill our role in this world we needed much more.

On Shavuos, seven weeks later, we arrived at Mount Sinai.  G-d spoke to us; G-d gave us our way of life, the path that would lead us upwards to Him; the path that would guide us through life and through history, the path that would illuminate the world with the light of Torah.  But receiving the Torah was one thing; assimilating it, absorbing it, bequeathing it forever to our children was another.

Mount Sinai was the beginning of a huge challenge.  Our rabbis tell us that "Sinai" also means "sina," hatred.  The hatred of the nations was aroused at Mount Sinai, as was the antagonism of our own evil inclination, which tried - G-d forbid -- to destroy our attachment to Torah.  Now the fight began.  We see the results during the summer months after the holiday of Shavuos: the tragedies of the Seventeenth of Tammuz and Tisha B'Av mark the terrible struggle within the souls of our people: will the Torah predominate or will the Evil Inclination succeed, G-d forbid, in stripping the holiness from the Nation of Israel?

But we survive Tisha B'Av, and we continue struggling to reach up to G-d.  We have seen the depths to which we can descend, and now we vow to fight ceaselessly to come closer to our Father in Heaven.  We will not give up!

And so comes the month of Elul with the sound of the shofar, which stimulates us to come closer to Him and to strive even harder for victory over our adversary.  Selichos comes and then Rosh Hashana, the day on which we cry out to our King to save us, and redouble our dedication to Him.  Throughout the Ten Days of Repentance we make specific efforts to improve ourselves in order to merit continued life.

And then we come to Yom Kippur, a day so holy that we become completely spiritual.  We have striven so mightily that G-d enables us to become like angels, dressed in white, not partaking in physical activities, creations who are for that day all soul, all ruchnius.  This is the day of victory over our Evil Inclination; this is the day we have been working for since G-d liberated us from Egypt.  This is the day when we cleanse ourselves and begin the new year as new people, souls totally dedicated to the Torah and the service of our Father in Heaven.

So what is left?  What more is there to do after Yom Kippur?  Isn't this the ultimate step in our spiritual progression? 

Apparently there is more.

When we enter the Sukkah we are like Adam and Eve before the sin.  We are like new creations who enter a world of purity and live in a world of purity.  The world inside the sukkah is like the Garden of Eden.  We have been freed physically; we have received the Torah; we have struggled with our Evil Inclination; we have heard the sound of the shofar and done teshuva; we have cleansed ourselves, and now we have reached what is apparently the ultimate level for a person in this world.  

On Yom Kippur, since we were not yet fully purified, since we were still struggling with our attachment to the material world, we could not eat or indulge in physical activities because our entire effort was to raise ourselves to the level of ruchnius in which our entire attachment would be to G-d.

But now that Yom Kippur has purified us, we have, in effect, returned to the state of mankind at the beginning of creation.  There is no sin in us; our enjoyment of the material world is no longer in competition with our attachment to our Creator.  We are like Adam and Eve at the moment of their creation, who were not embarrassed by their physical bodies because they were completely without sin.  We are on such a level that we merit to sit at the table of our Fathers Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Yosef, Moshe, Aharon and Dovid.

Our souls are in the shomayim and our feet are on earth, and there is no conflict.  It is in this perfect setting that we occupy ourselves completely with Torah; we are able to grasp G-d's Word to the greatest degree possible to a creature of flesh and blood.  Thus it is fitting that the culmination of the entire holiday season is with Simchas Torah, for indeed the Torah itself is the ultimate and only real simcha!

May we, the Holy Nation of Israel, merit to remain in this condition forever, and may we see this year the return of all our brethren to the state of purity for which G-d created us.  May the entire world become the Garden of Eden it was meant to be, and may we enjoy unlimited access to the holiness of our Creator and a world filled with the light of Torah.

Don't think this is a fairy tale, my dear friends.  This is reality.  All the rest is fantasy.  We will get there with G-d's help and with our own unceasing devotion and effort.  May we see it soon in our days.

With blessings for a year in which we all achieve our entire potential!

Roy S. Neuberger

I wish to thank Rabbi Moshe Chaim Hunger for his profound thoughts,
which helped me greatly in writing this.