If you're looking for nobility, search not among noblemen. If you're looking for royalty, search not in palaces. If you're looking for aristocracy, go to a sinking ship.
In good times and in good places, everyone is noble and of fine character. Perhaps they only mirror everything around them. When everything around falls apart, then inner light - and strength - shines.
When bad things happen, good things can happen. He, in His infinite wisdom, declared: Only a cloud can produce a rainbow.
Must we suffer to flourish? Sukkos tell us no. But start at the beginning.
Egypt was a paradise - the Garden of Eden, lush, healthy, sensual, stable. Decadent. The Jews wanted only to melt in the fleshpot called Egypt.
This slice of Jewish history reveals the ultimate triumph of the Exodus: not G-d taking the Jews out of Egypt, but G-d taking Egypt out of the Jews.
Eighty percent of the Jews refused to go. Only 20% of the Jews joined Moses for the Exodus. Those who went, quickly learned that everything called safety and security is neither. Rivers turned bloody, pestilence destroyed blue-chip commodities, entire flocks succumbed to disease, cities were suddenly vanquished and legacies were irretrievably destroyed.
In World War II, Buckingham Palace was bombed. People saw that palace rubble and tenement rubble is identical. For if G-d does not build the house, the Psalmist lets us know, you work for nothing.
Does a palace have to be destroyed for us to sense its vulnerability, its tenement-shared quality? No, we only have to destroy our illusions of it. True aristocrats can do that.
On Sukkos, we leave secure and beautiful homes for roofless huts. We take our meals there, even if the strong rain turns the chicken soup to water. Significantly, Sukkos is in the fall, the harvest season, after the crops have come in, after the bills have been paid off. After the storehouses are full.
The logs are on the fire. You are about to slip into your slippers. But you leave your house, and go into your sukkah, and remember what happens to slippers in the rain. What happens to palaces in blitzkriegs.
For in sukkos I housed the Jewish people, says the Torah. I housed them in sukkos; in the knowledge of the Psalmist, all is nothing if HaShem did not build it. That is the place where aristocrats are. Or to paraphrase the beloved Reb Leivik*, who would rather be anywhere else?
* Rabbi Levi Yitzchok Schneerson, the father of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Reb Leivik was the great-grandson of the third Lubavitcher Rebbe. He served as Chief Rabbi of the city of Dnepropetrovsk (Yekatrinislav) in the early Soviet era. He was arrested in 1939 and exiled to Asiatic Russia. He passed away Menachem-Av 20, 5704/1944, while still in exile.
In good times and in good places, everyone is noble and of fine character. Perhaps they only mirror everything around them. When everything around falls apart, then inner light - and strength - shines.
When bad things happen, good things can happen. He, in His infinite wisdom, declared: Only a cloud can produce a rainbow.
Must we suffer to flourish? Sukkos tell us no. But start at the beginning.
Egypt was a paradise - the Garden of Eden, lush, healthy, sensual, stable. Decadent. The Jews wanted only to melt in the fleshpot called Egypt.
This slice of Jewish history reveals the ultimate triumph of the Exodus: not G-d taking the Jews out of Egypt, but G-d taking Egypt out of the Jews.
Eighty percent of the Jews refused to go. Only 20% of the Jews joined Moses for the Exodus. Those who went, quickly learned that everything called safety and security is neither. Rivers turned bloody, pestilence destroyed blue-chip commodities, entire flocks succumbed to disease, cities were suddenly vanquished and legacies were irretrievably destroyed.
In World War II, Buckingham Palace was bombed. People saw that palace rubble and tenement rubble is identical. For if G-d does not build the house, the Psalmist lets us know, you work for nothing.
Does a palace have to be destroyed for us to sense its vulnerability, its tenement-shared quality? No, we only have to destroy our illusions of it. True aristocrats can do that.
On Sukkos, we leave secure and beautiful homes for roofless huts. We take our meals there, even if the strong rain turns the chicken soup to water. Significantly, Sukkos is in the fall, the harvest season, after the crops have come in, after the bills have been paid off. After the storehouses are full.
The logs are on the fire. You are about to slip into your slippers. But you leave your house, and go into your sukkah, and remember what happens to slippers in the rain. What happens to palaces in blitzkriegs.
For in sukkos I housed the Jewish people, says the Torah. I housed them in sukkos; in the knowledge of the Psalmist, all is nothing if HaShem did not build it. That is the place where aristocrats are. Or to paraphrase the beloved Reb Leivik*, who would rather be anywhere else?
* Rabbi Levi Yitzchok Schneerson, the father of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Reb Leivik was the great-grandson of the third Lubavitcher Rebbe. He served as Chief Rabbi of the city of Dnepropetrovsk (Yekatrinislav) in the early Soviet era. He was arrested in 1939 and exiled to Asiatic Russia. He passed away Menachem-Av 20, 5704/1944, while still in exile.