How To Celebrate Sukkot

You're obligated to sleep in the sukkah. It's very, very important. If you can't sleep in a sukkah because it's too hot, that's not a sukkah. It's a tent. It's for camping. So you have to put it so what I have So this year there's a lot of shul I'm going to try to see if put something We have the fan already. We're going to try to see maybe I can put the air conditioner in the sukkah. It's so hot. But you have to do it. Now what happens? I asked I have a few students that live in apartments. In apartments and not everybody allows Not everybody has a balcony. And even if you have a balcony, not everyone allows people to build a sukkah on a balcony. And this is not Israel where no one, you know Most of the time it's wrong. In Israel, you build it you don't ask the landlord anything. You just do whatever you want. Here in America, you do whatever you want they take down your sukkah. So can't do whatever you want. So uh As far as sukkah, if you're able to build, build obviously. If you can't build, then to eat you have to find a place to eat. You have to find a place to eat your sukkah. You're not allowed to eat bread outside of the sukkah. You have to find a place to eat. And sleep, if you can't find a sukkah to sleep in then you sleep then you're patur. You're anus. You stay at home. Now, if you mamash don't have any friends and you can't find someone to host you to go to their sukkah and have dinner there or you just can't make it there. You don't feel good. It's a real reason, not an excuse like you don't feel like, you know, it's a uh you know, like me where you're suffering at 72°. Mamash, you have a real you have a real reason of why you can't go. You don't have uh somebody you know, no one's inviting you, whatever the reason is, then you're anus. Then you can eat at home. But in reality, you are missing out on one of the biggest mitzvot in the Torah. So you have to do whatever you can to find a way to at the very least eat at the sukkah. And baruch Hashem in America, one of the advantages that we have is that it's very easy to be Jewish. Even though there's 40% anti-Semitism, it's still very easy to be Jewish in most of America. So, almost every single place, synagogue, sometimes restaurants, they have a sukkah. So, you can go eat at the sukkah. So, even if you don't have any friends, you have a synagogue. So, go to the synagogue. The sukkah of the synagogue has a sukkah. The second thing about Sukkot is that uh there is a little bit of a uh confusion about what's about the uh these sukkot that they made popular over the last few years. Uh I forgot what they're called. Um but they you put you pretty much put the pieces together. It's like Lego. Uh and they have three strings on the side because you're supposed to have something that's like the uh equivalent of a wall. There's halakha of how it's supposed to be a difference in space between each string. The problem is with those strings or the the felt is that if wind comes, the felt moves. The strings move. And if it moves even an inch, it's pasul. The whole The whole sukkah is pasula. So, you have to replace those things. Uh that's what comes with the sukkah itself when you buy it from the store. Uh so, you have to replace it either with metal poles that you connect from one side to the other on all three sides or with like a plastic or a wooden fence. Like small like 1-ft fence. I went to a Home Depot yesterday. Uh it's like 10 bucks, 12 bucks each one of these little fences. You get, you know, depends how big your sukkah is. Three, four, five of them, however many you need. And you have a kosher sukkah. The reason why because if you stay with just those strings, you might as well stay at home. It's no sukkah. So, it's a very, very big mitzvah, but it's a very easy mitzvah to ruin. Very easy mitzvah to just not do right. So, that's the second thing. Uh third thing is, it's extremely important to learn Torah in a sukkah. You have to spend, especially the men, the men have to spend as much time in the sukkah as possible, to such an extent that the Mekubalim said you shouldn't leave the sukkah at all. The whole holiday. Even to go to the bathroom, in the old days they would go next to the sukkah. They'll go next to the car, they would cover their obviously, but they would not they would try to do everything possible not to leave the sukkah even to go to Beit Knesset. Lulav, everything that we do inside the sukkah is there is such big kedusha being in the sukkah, you shouldn't leave it. Now, today obviously things are a little bit different, you still go to the Beit Knesset and so on, but you get the point. The point is be in the sukkah as much as possible. If you're learning, learn in the sukkah. If you're eating, eat in the sukkah. As much time as you can spend in the sukkah, spend. That's So, that's why it's good that tomorrow before the chag starts, you know, you have only a day and a half before the chag starts, spend as much time as you can preparing. You need to put a few extra um fans, put a few extra fans. Put in air condition, if you could put air condition, put air condition. Whatever you going to put in there just to make it comfortable. Because if it's not comfortable, it's not a sukkah. So, those are the few things. Now, the other thing about Sukkot that we're so excited about the party cuz it's a very big day. And the Torah says this is a day technically that if the knew how significant the Sukkot is, they would celebrate. Because this is a day that Am Yisrael would bring korbanot for all 70 nations every day. They would bring korbanot to the Beit Hamikdash in their name. So, if the knew they were actually bringing carbon up, we're bringing sacrifices in their names, not only they wouldn't have destroyed the Bet Hamikdash, they would have actually sent their armies to protect the Bet Hamikdash. Because all of their parnassa, all of their good, all of everything that they have depends on what happens now. So, they would protect the Bet Hamikdash. But, unfortunately, they didn't know, so they ruined it. But, we get so carried away with the party, which we're supposed to, that sometimes we forget about the promises we made during Yom Kippur. And during Rosh Hashanah, when we ask Hashem for another chance, for another year, let me live another year so I can do more mitzvot, let me live another year so I can do more tzedakah, let me do this, let me You want another chance. Nobody wants to die. Doesn't matter whether you're 50 or you're 500, it doesn't make a difference. Noach, over 600 years old, doesn't want to die. Nobody wants to die. Everyone wants to live. So, you say, "Hashem, give me more chance." The problem is that we made a lot of promises. We made a deal with Hashem. >> [music] [music]