​​Sukkot - 5786

​​Sukkot - 5786

Rabbi Hal Miller

  You shall dwell in booths for a seven-day period, every native in Israel shall dwell

  in booths so that your generations will know that I caused the children of Israel to

  dwell in booths when I took them from the land of Egypt. I am Hashem your God.

  [Vayikra 23:42-43]

Our verses tell us the who and why about the obligation to sit in a sukkah. But there is room for interpretation on both the who and the why. Who is the "native in Israel", and what is the tie between the sukkot and the exodus?

Regarding who is obligated, Ramban brings Torat Kohanim. "Native", this is to include someone born a Jew. "The natives" to exclude women. "All the natives" to include converts and emancipated slaves. To the possible argument that 'native' should not include converts, Ramban replies with a couple verses from Bamidbar [9:14, 15:15] saying, "One decree shall be for you, for the convert and the native of the land". Ramban explains that having tied the two groups together, the Torah does not need to keep repeating both whenever it addresses a native Israeli, There is discussion in various sources about the non-Jews joining us in Sukkot in the future to come, but in the mean time, all Jewish men are obligated. Why only men? This is a time-bound mitzvah, being for one given week a year, and women are usually exempt from time-bound mitzvot. Women are, of course, able to gain credit for fulfilling the mitzvah anyway, but they are not obligated as a man is or as women are for matzah on Pesach.

There are a number of purposes of the sukkah. Virtually all commentators tie the sukkah to the Clouds of Glory that God placed over Israel in the desert after the exodus from Egypt. Thus one purpose agreed upon by most is protection, whether from the heat or from snakes and scorpions, as Rashi and Ramban. Rav Hirsch notes that as a temporary structure, the sukkah is not going to protect us against enemies in a physical sense, thus the purpose is to encourage us to look to God. He says that the two purposes are protection and separation, which he explains as separating us from thinking that it is by our own strength and skill that we bring forth food, rather by God. Sfas Emes explains that the separation means that all Jews are welcome inside, but that all the wicked non-Jews are kept out of its walls. Since as above, non-Jews will someday incorporate the holiday of Sukkot into their lives, it seems that the wicked referred to here do not include all non-Jews, rather only a small portion of them. The walls of the sukkah know how to differentiate because the flimsy walls are indicative of our dependence on God.

Onkelos understands the purpose of the sukkah to be found in the phrase "so that your generations will know". Talelei Oros explains that when a father sits in the sukkah to fulfill his obligation, his children learn the importance of fulfilling mitzvot. The heritage becomes real when a parent observes it.

Another purpose is achdut, the unity of Israel. All Jews were together under the Clouds of Glory in the desert. All Jews are welcome into the sukkahs of those who have them, whether the guests are observant or not. The walls that keep out wickedness serve to protect all of us together.

Yet one more purpose is as a celebration of the harvest that God has given us for the year. This is one of the reasons why the holiday comes at this point rather than in the month of Nisan when the exodus from Egypt occurred and the Clouds of Glory appeared.

Sfas Emes discusses how the sukkah demonstrates our "rootlessness", that we as a people traveled through the desert and have been scattered through many lands. He ties the flimsiness and temporality of the sukkah to this rootlessness. He mentions that God's Presence appears in our sukkot. Perhaps, then, this rootlessness is in fact not rootless at all, rather the sukkah is to teach us that we are rooted in God, not in the physical world of the rest of the nations.