Sukkot: Surrounded by Hashem’s Protection - Rabbi Moshe Borger

Welcome to our prekot video. We say in the Torah regarding and you should rejoice on your festival on your holiday. Question is why does the Torah call sukkot our holiday your and my holiday? And the answer is because sukkat is a time of tremendous joy. And that's what we're going to try and tap into this year. I just want to share with you a story of Raoshe Maya who is a head of a coel called Zik Moshe and he shares a story of a friend of his who is today one of the great rabbis of the generation and for a time he was in the army and his maf his officer uh and him were loggerheads because he he was a religious Jew and his mafet was a a secular Jew who's grown up on a kibbutz with no connection whatsoever to Judaism. However, the young man at the time was very very strong and they had many many discussions to the point where actually his officer began to actually to to crumble a little bit and to soften and to start to believe a little bit and but then he would retract to the way he was before. This went on. They actually ended up becoming tremendous friends and they're friends until today. His Maked asked him one day, he said, "You know what? I hear what you're saying. I hear your arguments." He says, "But I'm not a believer. I don't believe. But I'll tell you something interesting. when I was in the Second World War and I was in the brigade, the Jewish brigade, and I was fighting and we were in the trenches and we had bullets flying all around us and people were being killed and I felt that my life was on the line. All of a sudden, I found myself saying, "Rabina Shala, master of the universe, God, save me. Save my life." Where did that come from? And you know what? That wasn't the only time this happened to me. Happened to me also the war of independence. It could be it was a later war, but it seemed to say the war of independence where says we were also we were under fire and we didn't know what we were going to do. We all thought that our end was near and again I found myself screaming out the words, "God, help me. save me. I didn't understand. Where did that come from? I don't believe in God. So where where did that come from? So the young soldier told his officer, he said, "I'll tell you where it comes from. We're in a constant battle, every single one of us, between the physical and the spiritual, between the body and the soul. Constant, constant battle. One moment you feel you want to eat a cheeseburger. Next moment you feel that you want to be a good person, you want to be kind. You want to be charitable. You want to be better. You want to be more giving. You want to be a better husband, a better wife. What's this battle going on? It's the battle between the body and the soul. When your life is in danger, I'll tell you what happened to you. When your life is in danger, then your body is mushak. It shuts down. And when your body shuts down, then your soul comes alive. And all of a sudden, that spiritual spark inside of you comes out. And you say, "Hashem, save me. Hashem, let me come close to you. Hashem, I want to change. I want to be better." So, we have just come through a very, very special time. It's no coincidence that this month is such a special month that month of tish. Tish by the way could actually understood as tish, which means to rest. That we ask God to rest his divine presence upon us. We ask him to allow us to come close to him. And this month is a month which is filled with festivals. Rashash Shana some people say that the 10 days in in between of rash to yipur is like even days or intermediate days until yumipur and then we have sukkot and they have to. It's a time which is filled filled with joyful times. It's not for nothing. Let's just go back. Let's backtrack a little bit. So first of all the Ramalato says that we should realize that actually we're in this constant battle all the time during the weekday we have six days where we're giving to our body and then all of a sudden afterwards have Shabbat. Amazing thing. All of a sudden you stop working. You stop focusing on money. You stop focusing on physicality as much and all of a sudden even though you're enjoying some good food on Shabbat, some good chicken soup, some jan, whatever you happen to be eating, but nonetheless it's for a spiritual purpose and suddenly you get in touch and all of a sudden you feel elevated and all of a sudden your soul suddenly starts to come out more as you allow yourself to devest yourself of your physicality and give yourself over to your spiritual side. That's something that we do every single week. Then you have rash shash. We don't do mala. We don't do any kinds of work, productive work as prescribed in the Torah. And then we hear the chauffeur as they say, if the chauffeur is blown in the city, will the people not tremble? You hear the chauffeur and it wakes you up. It wakes you up spiritually. So we have that and then after that we get to Yamipur where we're fasting and we have five different types of afflictions. No marital relations, eating, drinking, no wearing leather shoes, no washing. And each of these five things is actually is designed in order to detach us from our physical needs in order to allow us to go and focus on our spiritual connection. And that's what we do. We spend an entire day of spirituality of reaching out of connecting to God. That's really what we try and do. And in fact, as we know, it's often physicality that gets us into into into trouble. Whether it's stealing, whether it's relationships, whether it's food, whether it's some other kind of addiction, it's the physicality is our physical body that pulls us away. So where does sukat come into the picture? So sukkat is a time when we live in the suka. says, "For seven days you shall dwell in the suka like I caused you to dwell in sukkot in the midbar in the desert." The time of our rejoicing. Why is it a time of such great rejoicing? So I'll tell you why, but I'll introduce it with a question. The Torah Rabiner asks, "Why is it that we have Sukkot in the month of Tish, the beginning of the winter? Shouldn't it rather be in Nissan in the spring? That's really when we lived in Sukkot. When we came out of Egypt, we lived in Sukkot in the desert. It was during the springtime. It was beautiful." So there are many different answers to the Torah. Believe the Torah himself answers. It's because the other nations will say, "Of course, you're living in Sukkot during the springtime. You're going out to your summer houses. You're just like everybody else." And therefore, it has to be specifically in the time when the rainy season is just about to begin. And amazingly we get up and we leave our homes and we make a flimsy structure, a temporary structure and we live in it for seven days. Many people sleep in the suka as well. Many people spend as much time as they can during their day in their suka. Literally leave their home. Don't if you're going to sit and relax. Don't relax on your couch in your home. You relax on your couch in your suka. You move your couch into your suka if you can. So what's going on with all of this? So that's one idea is that we're showing that we're doing this for the sake of Hashem. We're showing Hashem that we know, we believe in him, we trust in him. And says it goes to show that we trust in Hashem that he's going to protect us and they are that we are safe and secure just as much when we go and we live and we sleep in our suka as we are inside of our houses with the surveillance AI cameras with the security systems with all the locks on our doors. We're just as safe inside our suka with its two, three or four walls. What an amazing thing. But they say also another answer is because sukkot comes after the days of rash shana yam kipur where we gradually starting to devest ourselves of our physical drives and starting to become more spiritual to the point where finally we come into the suka and we say you know what hashem my physical home is beautiful thank you hashem for giving it to me but I feel even closer closer to you if I make a special home for you that I'm going to dwell in and I'm going to be close to you. A home which is made out of wood which is covered with leaves. A home which doesn't have all of the trappings of physicality where I don't have a button to press to do everything for me. I most likely don't have an AC control there with an AC an air control air conditioning inside. and instead and I feel so close to Hashem nonetheless. And when I lie down in my suka and I look above and I look through the holes in the covering in the leaves and I can see the heavens, it reminds me that I'm under your constant care. I'm under your constant love and I'm under your constant protection. And even as I am sitting in this flimsy structure, I'm safe and I'm protected. And the flimsy structure, the flimsy physical structure shows that I want to divest myself of all of my physical drives. Not all of them, but rather to have the right focus with them to use them in the right way. And that's why it says that we use even stuff that usually you would throw away. You throw away leaves. You throw away bits of wood, but yet for the suka, you can use it as a support beam on your suka. You can use the leaves to cover your suka to make your suka into a kosher suka. What an unbelievable thing to be able to say that even the least significant physicality sometime somehow has some significance now to my life because physicality is important if I'm using it in order to serve you hashem it's important if I'm using it for spiritual goals that's why I need that's why I'm going to use the physicality in fact fromichev it's a beautiful idea says that a suka the minimum size of a kosher suka not the actual physical size inside that's a that's a whole different explanation but in terms of the walls you need two walls and a teak and a hands breath and if you look at that it looks like two arms and a hand being held inwards. It's like a hug. It's a divine hug. It's a divine embrace from Hashem when we go into the suka. That's the minimum size of the suka. But we surround ourselves with the walls of the suka. So why do we surround ourselves? Why do we not have just that divine embrace? And the answer is because the suka also represents the clouds of glory. As we traveled through the desert for 40 years, we were surrounded by clouds and they were not physical clouds in the sense of being something a strong structure. They protected us from our enemies. So the Egyptians where all of their missiles were bounded off off the walls meaning off the clouds and we were protected there even though they were just clouds. of Desla explains they were literally physical clouds but miraculously they were able to protect us and we were surrounded and we're protected from the intense heat of the sun and the clouds were around us on all four sides and they were also on there was also a cloud on top and there was a cloud underneath us and there was also a seventh cloud that was in front of us and that says the is the reason why we have seven days of it's almost Like every day we're focusing on a different cloud, different element. Just think about it. If you're you're outside exposed to the elements and one wall is missing, then you're you're in danger. So every single wall is important to us. So is above, so is below. That we can't be harmed by the different creatures that are on the ground. Snakes and scorpions when we're in the desert. We're being protected from all of us, from all of that. And the med says that the cloud underneath us actually acted like a a walker later or an escalator that just carried us through the desert. We didn't even need to walk. Hashem was taking us everywhere we needed to go. And Hashem is taking us is taking you everywhere that you need to go in life. That's what the idea is. And then we had that cloud in front of us on the outside that was guiding us. There's also there's a guide. We're being shown where we need to go, what we need to do. Say every day prepares the footsteps of of man. And in that braha, I'm supposed to think to myself, you Hashem are the one who's taking care of the direction that I'm going in in life. That's what I need to think about. So that's why we're celebrating on Sukkot because of the joy of the closeness to Hashem because of the realization of the Rashashana and Yamikur that we've come so close and we've been able to actually tap in to our spiritual self. That's what we need to do. heard a beautiful idea about the arinim the four species. As we know there are two famous midrashim. One major says that the four species the myrtle and the will the myrtles and the willows are actually connected symbolically are connected to four different types of Jews. On one hand, you have a Jew who's like the rogue that has taste and a good smell that has Torah and mitzvot. And then you have a Jew who's like the lulaf. The lulaf produces dates, palm tree produces delicious dates. It has taste, but it doesn't have a good smell. So it has taste. It has which means it has Torah but it doesn't necessarily it's a person who doesn't necessarily have mitzvot. And then you have also theim the myrtle has a nice smell but it doesn't have a taste. Somebody who has who has to who's got good deeds but doesn't have Torah. And then you have finally you have the willow that has neither taste nor smell. There are some of us that have neither Torah or good deeds, but yet we're all bound together. It's very beautiful. Another med says that they really represent different parts of us. The one hand you have the edrog which is which is like the heart. It doesn't look like a heart, but it's like a heart. It's soft like the heart. It's loyal to Hashem like the edro tree was loyal to Hashem. It listened to Hashem in Ganedan when it was commanded to keep the taste of the fruit like the taste of the like the taste of the tree. You have the lul which represents our spine which means being upright in our service for Hashem. Then you have the myrtles which represent [clears throat] which represent the eyes using our eyes for good things to look at the right things. [snorts] And then finally the willow the leaves of the willow looked like the shape of lips to show us that we should use our speech. We should use our words in the right way. It's really those so it's two two very very nice ideas. And the question is what does it have exactly to do with us? On the one hand we're saying that the four species are us. On the other hand, we're saying that the four species represent four different aspects of how we're supposed to serve Hashem. So the thing is that actually says Ra dove tights that really that is a time of judgment. Yeah. Even with all the joy, it's a time of judgment. It's a time of judgment for the rain. That's what we're being that's what we're being judged for. that we actually say to straight after that we ask for the rain. We judge being judged for the for the water that we're going to get this year and yet the four species are drying out. Each one of them is drying out. So those four species take our place and they dry out and they're an atonement for us that we can connect and we can get closer to Hashem. So that's really what we need to focus on. I was actually thinking it's interesting. I mean we have all four species. We bind them together. So on the one hand the idea is that we're supposed to be bound together supposed to have a we're supposed to have unity with one another. And in fact actually theati says that Ashkanazim have a special thing to hold to bind the lulaf together with the myrtle and the willows. It's called koshik and you stick them inside. So says the rakinati. The reason is because actually each of the four species represents a different letter of the divine name of y and hey and v and hey represents that name. And when we're binding them together we're actually unifying God's name. And how are we unifying God's name? By the fact that we're all putting ourselves together. we're joining together that all the different types of Jews are joined together. But I was thinking that perhaps actually in a certain way we're really all of the four species because in certain ways we have Torah and we have good deeds in certain areas. We understand what we're supposed to do. Let's say take Shabbat. Person who's keeping Shabbat, he understands what Shabbat is. She's lighting Shabbat candles. you're keeping, you're connecting to it. But then maybe there's another mitzvah could be not not speaking, not speaking bad speech. Yeah. And that's more of a challenge. So in every area, in certain areas, we understand why we're doing things and we do them. In other areas, we understand things, but we don't do them. In other areas, we do things, we don't understand why we're doing them. And in certain areas, we just don't do. We don't know and we don't do. And that's okay because that's who we are. We're on a journey. Just like when we went through the desert, we were on a journey and we were surrounded by those seven clouds that protected us. So too, we're also on a journey of growth and trying to get closer and close to Hashem. So God should help us to be able to tap in to truly be happy because the true happiness is when we're able to connect with one another. The true happiness is when we're able to overcome our various different challenges, physical challenges, emotional challenges, and to be able to connect to Hashem and to be able to connect to our spirituality and to be able to finally win that battle. Even though it's a constant battle, to win that battle between the soul and the body, the soul as much as possible will win. Have a wonderful