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Sukkot 5764
The rabbis of old were great sticklers for details.
God told Moses “don’t boil a kid in it’s mother’s milk,” and from this the
rabbis derived requirements for two sets of dishes, they argued about the
number of hours that must separate eating meat from dairy, and they
evolved a very complicated set of rules including what to do if some milk
splashes on the OUTSIDE of your meat pot.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that when it comes
to building a sukkah, we have endless detail about what to do.
In the Torah, we are commanded as follows:
“You shall dwell in booths
seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths; that your
generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in
booths, when I brought them out of the Land of Egypt."
The rabbis, of course, could not leave it to chance that
someone might not be clear on exactly what does, and what does NOT qualify
as a sukkah, as a booth. So a major part of an entire tractate of
the Talmud is taken up with a discussion as to what is and what is not a
kosher sukkah. You can imagine, this is a very complicated topic.
There is a minimum height, there is a maximum height. There is a
minimum number of walls, and they have to have a certain height.
There are rules regarding horizontal gaps in the walls, and there are
rules regarding vertical gaps in the walls. There are rules about
how the walls must be built, and there are rules (the most involved) about
what the roof should be made of and how it should be constructed.
Some of the rules are rather amusing: for example, everyone agrees that an
elephant securely bound can be used for one wall of your sukkah, but there
is a disagreement about an elephant NOT securely bound, or about other
types of animals.
There is one rule that they all agreed on however: and that
rule is that the height of the sukkah cannot be more than 20 amot, which
is about 30 feet. Everyone agrees that a sukkah more than 20 amot
high is pasul, it is not a valid sukkah. Note that this means 30
feet tall, not 30 feet in the air: a sukkah on an apartment balcony is
valid as long as the roof of the sukkah is not more than 30 feet above the
floor of the sukkah.
Everyone agrees on the rule—well, almost everyone.
Rabbi Judah disagreed, but none of his colleagues paid attention to him,
and the law has, indeed, come down that a sukkah cannot be more than 20
amot high. What the rest of the sages don’t agree on is the reason
for this rule. There are three different schools of thought
regarding why a sukkah should not be more than 20 amot tall.
The verse says that we
should build a sukkah “that your generations may know that I made the
children of Israel dwell in booths.” According to Rabbah, a sukkah
that was more than 20 amot tall would not fulfill this requirement.
If the roof is too far away from you, you have no idea that you are inside
a building or structure at all. The generations would not “know”
anything from sitting a sukkah like that.
R. Zeira finds a different
explanation: according to R. Zeira, the reason is that if the sukkah is
more than 20 amot tall, you would be sitting in the shade of the walls,
not the shade of the sukkah. And the rabbis understood the
requirement was to sit in the shade of the sukkah, hence the requirement
that the roof provide at least 50% shade coverage.
Rava (not to be confused
with Rabbah) gives yet another rationale. According to Rava, the
problem is that a sukkah is supposed to be a temporary dwelling—that’s
what makes it different than a house. Rava maintains that it is
physically impossible to build something that tall, 30 feet high, that
would qualify as a “temporary structure.” If you’re going to build
something with a roof that high up, it will take some serious construction
techniques so it doesn’t fall down on people and kill them. The
amount of reinforcement required would of necessity remove the structure
from the realm of temporary buildings.
These three reasons seem
completely disparate: to summarize, Rabbah says the sukkah can’t be more
than 30 feet tall because you won’t know you’re in sukkah; R. Zeira says
it can’t be more than 30 feet tall because you won’t be sitting in the
shade of the sukkah, but rather the shade of the walls; and Rava says it’s
because anything more than 30 feet tall can’t possibly meet the
requirement of “temporary.”
I said “seem” completely disparate, because if we dig
deeper we can find a common denominator between all three reasons, and
that common denominator speaks to the spiritual purpose of the holiday of
Sukkot.
The Ishbitzer rebbe, a Chasidic rebbe of the 19th
century, explains the deeper level in the following way.
Rabbah says the reason the sukkah can’t be so tall is that
you will know you are in a sukkah. When you are in a sukkah, you are
aware that God covers you, God is over you, and in fact this is real
essence of the sukkah—to know that God protects you, and we should be
aware that through God everything lives, and this awareness that
everything that lives, lives through the good graces of God fulfills the
requirement “so your generations will know.” The says so that the
generations will know that we dwelled in booths
when God brought us out of Egypt, an awareness
of God is an integral part of the commandment.
R. Zeira was the one who said the problem is sitting in the
shade of the sukkah rather than the shade of the walls. One of the
technical requirements for a sukkah is that while the walls are things
that are built by man, the scach,
the covering—the “roof”—must NOT be something made by man. It must
be natural materials—traditionally palm fronds in warmer climates, but any
tree branches will do. It cannot be something constructed for use as
an instrument of some sort. If you had a bamboo chair, you couldn’t
just toss it on the roof and use it as scach
because it is not in its “natural” state, it has been
transformed into something. And that is why we need to be sitting in
the shade in the shade of sukkah—it’s something made by God, whereas the
walls are something that are made by Man. This is to remind us that
everything comes from God. We are enjoined to remember this as well
regarding our material possessions. We shouldn’t think that all of
the stuff we own is because of the work of our hands—like the walls—we
should think of everything we get as flowing from God’s munificence—like
the roof of the Sukkah.
Rava’s issue was that the sukkah needs to be a temporary
dwelling. The Ishbitzer points out that the deeper meaning to this
is that we should ALWAYS be aware that we are just guests in God’s
world—it’s all temporary. Anywhere we
are able to see God—that’s where home is. Even a temporary place is
home, when God is with us. In a permanent structure, like our
regular homes, it’s harder for us to have that sense of being guests, of
being sojourners in God’s world. A portable home—a glorified
tent—gives that sense of being a traveler, which ideally reminds us of
whose world it is that we are traveling in—God’s.
And so we see that even though Rabbah, R. Zeira, and Rava
all had wildly disparate reasons for believing that a sukkah should not be
more than 30 feet tall, they all agree that ultimately the reason is that
the sukkah needs to serve as a reminder of God’s loving and sheltering
presence in our lives. If the sukkah does not serve to remind us of
our connection with God, and bring us closer to God, it is not fulfilling
its purpose.
And that, truly, is the purpose of all of our holidays.
Our holidays are not simply dry history lessons. As the Ishbitzer
points out, we don’t dwell in booths just to remember Egypt—rather we
dwell in booths to be aware of God. The same logic applies equally
to Passover. Passover is not just about remembering that God was
good to our ancestors over 3000 years ago—it’s about thinking about God as
a presence in our lives today, freeing us from whatever it is we put
ourselves in bondage to. In every generation we renew our connection
to God anew—we don’t just remember past generations’ connections with the
Holy One. It is taught that God showed Moses all the details of the
Torah, including the future teachings of the rabbis, but he then hid them,
so that each generation would find them anew in their time.
As you sit in the sukkah, whether the sukkah here at shul,
or at home or with friends, may you feel renewed by God’s presence
sheltering and blessing you!
Amen.
It is a great mitzvah to serve God with great joy,
always...R. Nachman of Breslov
Rabbi Barry Leff
Beth Tikvah Congregation
9711 Geal Road
Richmond, BC V7E 1R4
phone: (604) 271-6262
fax: (604) 271-6270
web: www.btikvah.ca
email: rebbarry@yeladim.org
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