Sukkot: The Deep Well of Love
Wisdom is wasted on fools. If you give wisdom to a fool, declared our sages, he will sully it with his folly. On the surface, this makes little sense: if fools don’t have wisdom, it can’t be wasted on them. But there is a deeper meaning here. Intellectual wisdom is wasted on those who lack emotional wisdom.
If your heart yearns for G-d, it is fitting that you fill your mind with the Torah—G-d’s wisdom will find a home in your heart. If your heart yearns for folly, filling your mind with G-d’s wisdom is a waste. It won’t find a home in your heart. Intellectual wisdom is the highpoint, but emotional wisdom is the key.
The High Holidays
This helps us understand the order of the High Holidays. They begin with Rosh Hashanah, which means head of the year. The head is the seat of the brain, the home of intellectual wisdom. Rosh Hashanah is a day for contemplation. It is the anniversary of creation when we contemplate G-d as our creator and our role as His creations. We analyze the power differential in our relationship and recognize that G-d is infinitely more exquisite, vast, powerful, majestic, mysterious, wise, and capable than us.
We are like an infinitesimal speck in a raging tempest tossed about over an endless abyss. The speck would feel small and helpless. In G-d’s presence, we conclude, we have much to be humble about. We sense our paucity relative to his endless greatness. We sound the Shofar and acknowledge our faults and His perfection. We resolve to be better, and in that resolution, we feel His embrace. In His presence, we sense deep mystery; in His embrace, we feel great strength and are buoyed.
Yom Kippur is not just a different cup of tea but an entirely different kettle. It is not intellectual at all. Yom Kippur is deeply emotional. We are like the high priest dressed in pure white vestments on the holiest day of the year, entering the holiest place on earth. The pure of the pure in the holy of holies.
This is not a time for contemplation, it is a deeply emotional experience. We dig deep into the innermost chambers of our hearts and make a home for G-d. Concurrently, G-d opens the deepest chambers of His proverbial heart and makes a home for us, yes even sinners like us. We love G-d and He loves us. Our heart of hearts opens wide and pulsates deeply in His holy of holies. It is a time of profound feeling.
It is like staring deep into a loved one’s eyes and finding a reflection of ourselves. As water reflects the face that peers into it, so does the heart reflect the hearts of those who love it. We love G-d on this day, and He loves us in turn. G-d peers deep into our hearts and finds Himself. We peer deep into G-d’s heart and discover ourselves. G-d makes Himself vulnerable on this day and lets us in. He grants us access to His holiest of holies. We enter, and what do we find? His love for us.
By the time Yom Kippur ends, we are in a deep loving relationship with G-d. We don’t just contemplate G-d as on Rosh Hashanah. We love G-d; He has a home in our hearts. At this time, it is appropriate to say that our intellectual wisdom has found a home in our emotional wisdom. We are an amalgam of both.
This sets the stage for Sukkot. The Sukkah is G-d’s home. There is no other Mitzvah that we enter fully. We don a talit (prayer shawl) but are not immersed in it. We eat a matzah (it enters us), but we don’t enter it. Yet, we enter the sukkah wholly and completely. The reverent sanctity of the Sukkah is not a foreign environment for us. Entering G-d’s home feels a lot like entering our own home.
All Jewish Citizens
The Torah says that all Jewish citizens dwell in the Sukkah. The mystics (III Zohar p. 103a) explained it like this: If you are of the root and branch of the Jewish soul, you can enter the shade of the Sukkah. If your heart yearns for G-d, you have a home in the Sukkah. All year long, our hearts are scattered. We want so many things that our desire for G-d can get buried. After Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, our hearts are open for G-d. We are the root and branch of the Jewish people. We belong in the Sukkah.
Rosh Hashanah opens our minds to G-d, Yom Kippur opens our hearts to G-d, but in a context of reverence. On Sukkot, we resonate with joyful love. Entering the Sukkah feels like entering G-d’s home. A pulsing feeling of joy courses through our veins, our hearts melt with ecstasy, and our pulse beats with love. Immersed in G-d's sacred will, our hearts are open to G-d, and His heart is open to us.
The Inner Jew
The Torah says venikdashti betoch benei Yisrael, I will be sanctified among the children of Israel (Leviticus 22:32). There is a much deeper way to translate this passage. I will be sanctified within the children of Israel. Within them means in their depths. When their heart, their inner dimension, opens wide for me, I am sanctified.
Yom Kippur opens our inner dimension to G-d. Aaron was the first High Priest of the Jewish people to enter the Holy of Holies. Since then, every high priest has acted as his successor.
Let’s break down the Hebrew letters of the name Aharon. It begins with alef, which signifies G-d. Numerically, alef is one, as is G-d. The next letter is hei, which is numerically five. Reish, is two hundred, Nun is fifty. These numbers, five, fifty, and two hundred, are each in the middle of their numeric order.
Five is the middle number from one to ten. Fifty is the middle number from ten to a hundred. Two hundred is the middle number from one hundred to four hundred. (Only the numbers one through four hundred are represented in the Hebrew alphabet. This makes two hundred the middle number in the hundred series.)
This means that when Aharon, or his successor, the high priest, enters the holy of holies on Yom Kippur, he opens the heart, the central inner dimension of the Jewish people, to the alef—the one G-d. This opening resonates loudly and joyfully on sukkot as we rejoice in G-d’s home.
The Festive Meal
There is one key distinction between Yom Kippur and Sukkot. To enter G-d’s holiest realm on Yom Kippur, we need to fast. We need to shed our link to the material realm and act like angels for a day. However, to enter G-d’s home on Sukkot, we are required to eat. It is not enough to enter the Sukkah and fast. We must enter and enjoy a festive meal.
On Yom Kippur, we dig deep into our hearts to find a wellspring of holiness—a place divorced from the hedonic plane. On Sukkot, we are already plugged into this sacred wellspring, and it encompasses our entire spectrum, the highest and the lowest, the inside and the outside.
Eating is holy on Sukkot; sleeping is holy on Sukkot, everything is holy on Sukkot, so long as we do it in the Sukkah. G-d’s home is all-encompassing on Sukkot. He embraces us fully in every dimension. As long as we are in His home and reveling in His embrace, everything we do is a Mitzvah.
No wonder Sukkot is the most joyful holiday of the year.
Rabbi Eliezer (Lazer) Gurkow, currently serving as rabbi of congregation Beth Tefilah in London, Ontario, is a well-known speaker and writer on Torah issues and current affairs.
