Sukkot

The whole calendar rolls out in this week's reading, one date after the next: Pesach, the Omer, Shavuot, the day of the loud blast, the Day of Atonement, and last of all, the booths.

It says, "מוֹעֲדֵי ה' אֲשֶׁר־תִּקְרְאוּ אֹתָם מִקְרָאֵי קֹדֶשׁ" - "the appointed times of Hashem, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions."

That word - מוֹעֵד... it's so much deeper than "holiday."

A mo'ed (מוֹעֵד) is an appointed MEETING.

He wrote us into His calendar. What a זכות!

Then the parsha gets to the last mo'ed of the year, and starts to get very specific.

"ba-sukkot teishvu" - "בַּסֻּכֹּת תֵּשְׁבוּ" - "you shall dwell in booths." The Gemara in Sukkah won't let teishvu mean "drop by." It reads teishvu k'ein taduru - dwell the way you actually LIVE! Move your everyday life and being INTO the sukkah!

And there's more we're commanded: "וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם לִפְנֵי ה' אֱלֹקֵיכֶם" - you shall REJOICE before Hashem, seven days.

Not "you may." You SHALL!

It's zman simchateinu, the season of our joy, packaged up inside the one building you know you're going to take down!

🎶'Life is just a bundle of joy'🎶 , and the bundle comes with a seven-day timer.

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So where's the house in all of this?

🎶 'You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack... And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"'

The Mei HaShiloach, the Izhbitzer Rebbe, sends us to Yaakov, on the day he finally parts from Eisav:

It reads: "וְיַעֲקֹב נָסַע סֻכֹּתָה וַיִּבֶן לוֹ בָּיִת וּלְמִקְנֵהוּ עָשָׂה סֻכֹּת עַל כֵּן קָרָא שֵׁם הַמָּקוֹם סֻכּוֹת" - Yaakov traveled to Sukkot, built himself a house, and made booths for his cattle. That's why the place is called Sukkot.

Wait... he builds himself a HOUSE, the COWS get the booths... and he names the whole place after the cow sheds???

The Izhbitzer says that's the whole point. Yaakov's house was built "בְּמַעֲמַקֵּי לִבּוֹ" - in the depths of his heart, where nobody could see it. And "וּלְמִקְנֵהוּ עָשָׂה סֻכֹּת" - everything he OWNED, he kept in booths. Because that's the thing any of us can actually learn to see: "שֶׁהַקִּנְיָנִים שֶׁלּוֹ הֵם שֶׁל הַשי"ת" - what he owns... actually belongs to Hashem.

The house goes inside. The stuff goes in the booth.

And look when this holiday falls out: right at the harvest, the one week a year everything you own is finally sitting in your house. That's exactly when Hashem says: "צֵא מִדִּירַת קֶבַע וְשֵׁב בְּדִירַת עֲרַאי" - leave the permanent house, go sit in the temporary one - "שֶׁיַּחֲזוֹר כָּל רְכוּשׁוֹ לְהַשי"ת" - so that all of it goes back to Hashem.

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R' Shlomo Carlebach, in Lev HaShamayim, brings the same Izhbitzer with a painful question:

Yaakov and Eisav learned the same Torah from the same father. How did they come out so different?

Yaakov worked, with everything he had, to get the anger out of himself. He davened for it all the time: "ריבונו של עולם! תוציא את הכעס מליבי!" - Master of the world, take the anger out of my heart!

Eisav never worked on himself. "בנקודה הזאת נפרדו זה מזה" - right there, they parted ways.

And where does our pasuk sit? One verse after Eisav turns back to Seir. Their paths split... and Yaakov walks straight to Sukkot.

R' Shlomo adds Rebbe Nachman: anger is FIRE. Someone gets angry at you and you fire back, and now you're the one finishing the job of burning down your own house.

🎶 'And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful house!"'

Put the two Torahs side by side and it's one picture. The booths are supposed to come down. The house in the heart is the one Yaakov guarded his whole life, and the only thing that can burn it down...

...is anger.

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August of 1996, Plattsburgh, a decommissioned air base. Tens of thousands of people drove into a field and built a city out of tents and tarps and canopies - the Clifford Ball - a whole town that existed for one weekend and then folded itself back into the cars and drove south (Shakedown comes down faster than any city in history).

Booths, everywhere you looked.

But deep down we always know... we don't want the booth.

We want the HOUSE!

We want that warm abode bolted down, solid, permanent. The last notes of Tweeprise ring out to close the final set, the field lights come up, and the whole festival you built starts coming apart in your hands...

🎶 'Hold on to anything you see and it's gone'.

Sunday morning you're wrestling a soaking tent into a bag two sizes too small, the magic begins to dwindle, sinking slowly into the mud.

And that's exactly when the fire starts.

The tent pole snaps. Somebody's car has yours blocked in. Your buddy packed the cooler "wrong." And suddenly you're yelling across a muddy field at the same people you were hugging twelve hours ago...

We were guarding the booth like it was the HOUSE.

And we do the exact same thing in our own sukkah this week:

➡️ A panel blows loose at two in the morning and you're out there in your socks, absolutely FURIOUS at a piece of canvas...

➡️ The rain comes through the schach halfway through the seudah, and somebody says "I TOLD you to cover the challot!"...

Then you catch yourself. Whose wall is this, anyway?

🎶 'And he hasn't got a house... But I borrowed it'

Remember Rebbe Nachman's fire? When someone gets angry at you, they've lit a fire in YOUR house. If you hold back, you can still put it out. If you get angry back, you finish the job for them, burning your own house down.

So which house is burning?

R' Shlomo brings the Arizal: a person in a rage is like a dead man, his neshama has left him. Hashem stays with a Jew through every sin in the world, "הַשֹּׁכֵן אִתָּם בְּתוֹךְ טֻמְאֹתָם" - He dwells with them even in the middle of their impurity. But anger is the one thing that makes the soul say "I can't be here"... and walk out.

That's the house Yaakov built in the depths of his heart. The place where his neshama lives with Hashem.

Yaakov never protected himself by guarding his stuff. His stuff was in booths. What he guarded was his heart, and he davened for it every single day: take the anger out of my heart.

So why does the Torah command joy inside the one structure that's guaranteed to come down???

Because the sukkah is how we learn that none of it was ever ours. It's all Hashem's. And when you really KNOW that, a snapped tent pole or a soaked tablecloth can't make you angry... it was never yours to lose. Take the anger out, and what's left is simcha.

The Izhbitzer says the one who hands it all back to Hashem is the one who actually has something that lasts: "זֶה הוּא הַקְּבִיעוּת הָאֲמִיתִּי" - THIS is the true permanence.

And the fire itself? R' Shlomo doesn't want us to just stamp it out. The Beit HaMikdash burned in fire, and the fire that burned it was anger. The tikkun is to take that same fire and turn it into a fire of love. Rebbe Nachman puts it simply: when anger comes, overpower it with even bigger compassion, for the very person you wanted to be angry at.

So the guy whose car has you blocked in... look him in the eye and let him have it:

🎶 'We're glad, glad, glad that you're alive'

Hashem doesn't book this meeting in a fortress. He books it in a booth, He pulls out a chair, and He says, 🎶'Sit yourself down when you're ready to stay'.🎶

I'm davening this week that Hashem takes the anger out of our hearts the way He did for Yaakov, that we leave everything we own out in the booth and build Him a house deep inside... and that Ribono Shel Olam pulls up a chair in that house and sits down with us, seven borrowed days closer than we've been all year...

🎶 'It's exactly how it's supposed to be'.

Shabbat shalom and chag sameach, phriends.