Why Sukkot Is the Deepest Joy of the Year - Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Sukkos is man simchas sainu. All of the hagim have an element of simcha as samachta v'chagacha. But Sukkos is b'frat is specially a time of simcha. What is it about Sukkos that is specially connected with simcha? And what are we supposed to take away from Sukkos which will give us the simcha and we can take that simcha with us into the rest of the year? I'd like to examine three aspects of Sukkos where we see simcha. The first is the simchas beis hasho'eivah. The simchas beis hasho'eivah was a a ceremony by which people would go down to the Gichon spring south of the beis hamikdash, south of the temple. And they would draw up water and they would bring this water up onto the mizbei'ach. And the water would be poured down flues, deep deep holes which would channel all the way down to the very depths of the earth. The idea is to connect something to its depth. To return something to its source. Tosfos says that what they were drawing up was not just water. They were drawing up spirituality from the depths of being. And all spirituality is the connection of myself to what is the source of all spirituality, to Hashem. They were drawing up from the depths of being. That's what they were doing. That's the simchas beis hasho'eivah. The simchas beis hasho'eivah also now is commemorated in Yerushalayim principally. If you've ever been If you haven't been, you should be. If you've ever been for Sukkos in Yerushalayim, you'll know what that is. All the yeshivas, the the streets are full of dancing and merriment. And this actually goes back it has its root in the minhag that in the beis hamikdash they would have tremendous simcha, joy, dancing. There would be huge candelabra taller than a building which would illuminate the entire city. And they would dance and they would dance and who would dance? Not you and me, not the everyday people. Only the greatest talmidei chachamim, the greatest tzaddikim would dance. And the reason is that music has a tremendous power. Music in fact the name of the chapter in which this is described in the Gemara in Sukkah is a chalil. Chalil is a flute in Hebrew. Chalil is connected to the word chalal. Chalal means an empty space. The reason a chalil is called based on chalal is because it's the column of air, that empty column of air inside the flute that causes the the sound. That's where the sound comes from. Nature abhors a vacuum, so Aristotle said. That vacuum maybe we could understand in the chalil, the chalal can be filled with one of two things. Etzel umatzah asah Elokim. Hashem made everything equal and opposite, light and dark black and white, positive and negative. Music has a tremendous potential to elevate. But music isn't always a stairway to heaven. Music has a power to take down to depress and to release in a person very basic and sometimes very unpleasant instincts. And that's why it was only the greatest talmidei chachamim who were would be sure to be able to harness that tremendous power of music of the chalil and to bring it to its proper place. The second place we find the idea of simcha in Sukkos is a rather unusual place. In the Gemara, the Gemara describes something called a tefach sameai'ach or a tefach tzochak. A tefach sameai'ach literally means a happy tefach or a laughing tefach. Now, what's a tefach? A tefach is is a handsbreadth, this distance between this and this. That's a a tefach. It's a measurement. What is a tefach sameai'ach? It's a slightly larger tefach. Why did Chazal give it this rather strange name of a laughing or a happy tefach? Why not just call it a tefach gadol or probably a modern Hebrew metzi tefach? What's the idea? True simcha always comes from the expansion of the ego. We start life with a very limited idea of who we are. That's why a child is called a katan, he's katu'a. Every single second is disparate, is separated from the other. You give a child a a lollipop, he'll be delighted. Take it away, the world just came to an end. A child has no idea of anything except this second. He's disconnected. When somebody becomes a gadol gadol comes from the root of gad gedud yagdidenu. Gad is a marching troop. The idea of gadlus is to be able to connect, to take every single separate moments in our lives and to connect them all together, to make them flow into a single cogent direction. Every gadol that I ever met, that I had the honor to meet and they were very different, had one thing that I can say in common, that they all took everything about their lives and it was all focused, it was all going in the same direction. Most of us have this this we get distracted. We live in a world where we're fighting weapons of mass distraction. Now this, now this, now this. Gadlus, and by this definition not too many of us actually grow up is to be able to take all the disparate elements of our lives and focus them into one single cogent direction. A person starts off his life and he his perception of himself is the limits of his world. As we said, a child is very limited. As a person grows up, he understands and the things that bring him simcha are those things that connect him beyond himself. When a person gets married, his definition of himself enlarges. It's not just me, it's me and my spouse. When he has children, his definition of himself is larger. And when he has grandchildren etc. etc. And a person like Avraham Avinu understood himself, his ego, his as being the entire world. That's me. That's who I am. That's the definition of I. In other words true simcha is to expand ourselves without getting out of ourselves. The tefach sameai'ach teaches us that true simcha comes from expanding who we are. Not getting out of who we are. Not getting out of it. Getting into it, if you might say. So that's the second example of the definition of simcha, understanding simcha that we have in Sukkos. The third example is something that I saw in Rav Dessler. Rav Dessler says there are two parts to Sukkos which ostensibly don't really have much to do with one another. One part is the arba minim and the other is the the booth, the sukkah that we sit in. What's the connection? Rav Dessler says that the arba minim is as well known as the Yalkut Shimoni, a midrash that teaches us that the four species represent four kinds of Jews. First of all, there's the esrog Jew. The Jew like the esrog who has ta'am, taste, and rei'ach, perfume, aroma. And that's the Jew who has both Torah, which is ta'am, taste, and he has ma'asim tovim, good deeds. He's a good person. And that's the rei'ach, that's the aroma. And then there's a lulav. The lulav comes from a palm tree. The palm has beautiful taste, dates taste beautiful. But a palm has no aroma, has no scent. So that's a Jew who has Torah, but he doesn't he's lacking in his ma'asim tovim. And then of course there's the hadas. The hadas has a beautiful aroma. That's a Jew who has ma'asim tovim, who's a good person, who relates well to bein adam l'chaveiro. But when it comes to his Torah, he's lacking, he doesn't have taste. And the willow, the poor old willow the aravah has neither taste nor ta'am. Neither good deeds nor Torah. Neither a nice pleasant smell and aroma nor a taste, nor fruit. So what's he doing there? The idea is that klal Yisrael is not klal Yisrael and is not doesn't merit the connection with Hashem that only the klal can have, only the generality, the whole group of us together, the congregation the kehilla only can come through us being unified. From the top to the least of us. Similar idea you see in Yom Kippur where in Yom Kippur by uh Kol Nidre, Kol Nidre night we davven, we pray that we can join together and pray with the avaryanim those people who are habitual sinners, not people who do things who are wrong once in a while. Somebody whose lives are completely devoid of connection to Hashem. And they're there, they have to be there. They have to be there because without them, that's not clearly Israel. That's a unity of connection. And that's the Arba Minim. And that Simcha as we said comes from connection. The connection to Hashem and the connection to each other. And the connection to ourselves on the deepest level. So, what's that got to do with the Sukkah itself, the booth? Rav Dessler explains the connection and says that on Yom Kippur it could be God forbid, Rachmana litzlan, that the Jewish people have been sentenced to exile, to galut. And so by moving out of our houses into the Sukkah, we fulfill that decree in some fashion. And that's so to speak an antidote, that's the antibiotic that allows us not actually to go into galut. Now, this is a really strange idea because if you think about it, you know, going into galut is a lot different to kind of moving a few yards outside your home into a a booth. The root of all galut is sinas chinam. The Jewish people have been wandering for the last two and a half two 2,000 odd years because of sinas chinam. Sinas chinam comes on the mistaken from the mistaken idea that everything that I see should really be mine. You're living in my house, you're driving my car. Your air that you're breathing, it's mine. This desire to take, this desire to bring to myself everything that's outside my perimeter is the basis of all sinas chinam and it's the reason for galus. Now in Yiddishkeit in Judaism, there's no such thing as a vindictive punishment. Kadosh Baruch Hu, his punishments are also things that allow us to fix ourselves. They're the cure. They're the punishment but they're also the cure. When a person goes into galut, all that acquisitiveness falls away. The well-known stories about the Blitz in London in the 1940 when the Germans, yemach shmam, dropped thousands and thousands of tons on London in an attempt to destroy the city. And there was something that they talk about to this day called the Blitz spirit. The Blitz spirit basically meant was I have nothing, but you know something, I can share that with you. That brings to unity. The galut the exile of the Sukkah is an exile which brings us to unity. So, we have these three aspects of Sukkos which are all bringing us to to Simcha. The Simcha we said first of all of the Simchas Beis Hasho'eivah of the drawing of the water of the connection to Hashem and of the power that's unleashed in unity by the Simchas Beis Hasho'eivah where everybody where everybody was together and watching the tzaddikim dance. And we talked about the the chalil the flute how that empty space can be filled with kedusha and has to be filled with kedusha. That connection, that emptiness has to be filled. And the Simcha we also saw of the connection to our fellow Jews on Sukkos. And that is the message I believe, one of the messages that we can take away from Sukkos. That we have to connect to Hakadosh Baruch Hu bein adam lamakom and bein adam lachaveiro in the Sukkah and also bein adam laatmo, that a person who still has to plan down into the his depths of being and connect to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. May all have a wonderful Sukkos. Hi. This is Peretz Moralki. A proud alumnus of Ohr Somayach. Now, what you just watched is one of the many programs that Ohr Somayach provides, leaving its impact on hundreds of thousands with so many more waiting to be reached. Ohr Somayach Central Campus in Jerusalem has over 300 students presently learning there. 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