Sukkah: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary, with Josh Body Esq

time period in yeshiva and now i get to go home and it's like almost like vacation and there's just a sense of almost relief that comes along with it but the truth is it's a little bit off right it's not like you finish this massive project and there's a sense of accomplishment which which is true there is but then you go oh let's celebrate you know it's not like all of a sudden we're going to disney world because we finished yom kippur the truth is that we had this period of growth and we accomplished a lot hopefully and we finished young paper and achieved this forgiveness and it's this immense sense of relief that hashem did this for us but we need to keep going but we need to keep working on ourselves and to keep growing we're not going to just take it easy and go sit in the beach now because we finished something you know you want to miss the mark about what this happiness really is the the piazza nureba wrote in his safer age kodesh he wrote the safer in the warsaw ghetto and he explains how some of his see them came to him during cinco's torah and they said to him you know rebecca i'm not sure we really can do something torah now we're just you know obviously we're in the warsaw ghetto this is not a great situation and i'm not sure how we can do it how can we do the simcha now when we're living in these conditions and robber said to him you know i don't think any of you came to me i don't remember any of you coming to me and you kipper and asked me how you were going to fast but you're coming to me announcing you can't beat the simcha because the problem is you misunderstand what it is you're trying to do is something we have to work at it doesn't just come naturally you don't only feel the simha because you happen to be happy you need to feel the symbol because that's what hashem is expecting of us now so as we go into this time period and we're supposed to be basim we need to make sure that we have the right perspective and we're thinking about what it is that we're supposed to be doing to make sure that we're getting the most out of this period of time but even though we're supposed to be focused on growth still clearly the vibe is different right and then kipper and roshana and kippur search mitchuva we have a certain sense of you know each person may feel somewhat differently but overall it's i need to do better i'm asking something from hashem i need to work at it and the vibe that we're feeling now is one more again of simha so yeah we want to grow with it but we got to make sure that we're doing it the right way and clearly it's a little bit different the truth is sukis being now is a little bit not so easy to understand you look in the torah the torah says why do we have the holiday of success because kiba sukho so shakti spanish foreign i we have success i had the jewish people living in sukkot and huts or whether first the clouds of glory when i took them out of egypt well that really could happen any time of the year in fact one could argue that the best time for sukkas really should be on pesach because that's when we left mitsrayam so why should we immediately also be recognizing the miracle what attempt did for us with the sukkos that we had now it could be that hashem just had a rachmanist on jewish women because he knew that if they didn't have their husbands to help them clean because they were dealing with building the sukkah and going out and buying you know rule of vanessa that it would cause major shoulder bias problems so maybe that's not the reason why we don't suck at some pace you know on pesach but really so this could be any time of year why is it now specifically following almost immediately on the heels of yom kippur you know and the truth is you have to wonder about something also the word we use for holidays in the torah is mo aid now mowing means literally a time of gathering which makes a lot of sense if shming us explains you know the word we're getting mowed because we're gathering together with hashem that's really what the point of the holiday is you know we spend time with our family spend time with hashem it's that really idea of growth through our relationship with hashem you know we just finished yom kippur right the holiest day of the year and you go through that and you're spending that day full day in shul with hashem no eating no drinking all you're doing is focusing on your relationship with hashem it seems like any holiday you would have after yom kippur would necessarily be a letdown so maybe sukkas needs to be a different time of year you know why we have to do everything all the hot jewish holidays you know the the torah holidays are all pretty much packed into a six month period but there's no reason that sukkah had to be four days yesterday on kipper we could just usually have circus another few months from now why exactly do we need to have it right now and what are we supposed to use it for to make sure that we're doing something that we didn't already have on yom kippur in terms of our connection or relationship to hashem you know i think one starting point is that yom kippur actually brings with it a little bit of a of a challenge let's say we go through the process starting from rosh chodesh going through the entire month of lol and rosh hashanah and that serious through yom kippur and we finish him kipper and hashem forgives us and now we are completely pristine it was as if we walk out you know imagine your clothing was dirty and now everything is stark white perfect in every way the problem with having a shirt that is completely white as any yeshiva guy can tell you is that any little tiny stain or speck of dirt is noticeable you know if you're wearing a shirt that's already kind of dirty you get something else on it it's not necessarily all that noticeable you know imagine like you know your five-year-old comes in you know from playing outside and he's just you know he's a mess and so then he happens to spill a little extra ketchup on his shirt it's not like it doesn't really matter the fact is at that point he was already pretty dirty you know but if you have your son that same five-year-old getting ready you know for shabbos and you're giving him something to eat and he spills a little bit of ketchup on his shirt oh that's a disaster because that little tiny bit of ketchup is so obviously noticeable on his shirt and the same thing is true somewhat in a certain perspective with young kipper we go through it we come out so pristine that the first little tiny aveira the first thing we do wrong whenever it is after yom kippur is over but immediately it's much more noticeable than have we done that same thing you know six months earlier and there's a certain danger that comes out of young kipper because the truth is we know that yum kippur does not last the entire year it's really inevitable and impossible to think that coming out from people we're going to stay that way until next year's home keeper you know you can think about where you are right now and how you're feeling right now even just last night and how you felt a month ago six months ago you know there's a difference and unfortunately we know this is the way the world operates that we're not going to be able to stay at that level jim kipper has a little bit of a danger with it and so hashem gave us success because that is i think the way to ease us into the rest of the year there's something about sukis that gives us a guidebook or a path to be able to do as best as we can in keeping ourselves as clean as possible as much as possible as we have whatever my you know level we reached any chipper to be able to keep that through the rest of the year okay so the question is is how what exactly is it about yom kippur about sukis that is going to give us the ability to make our way through the rest of the year and holding at that level so there's actually a fascinating discussion in the gemara in uh mistakes of otozara now a lot of women we're going to talk about now is based on things something from high and freelander in the sahayam so staffing gemara in navodazar describes a conversation that's going to take place between hashem and the nations of the world after mashiach has come there's been a grand revelation to the entire world that hashem his existence and at that time there's going to be this conversation hashem is going to say to the nations of the world whoever was involved in torah come forward and i'll give you scar i'll give you your reward so ignore goes of great lengths to describe all the different nations and what exactly it is they're going to say and just to sort of modernize it a little bit so imagine that when this happens all the nations come forward and say oh you know hashem we created passenger planes so jews could learn torah in israel we created world markets so people could be involved in business in order that they could support torah and learn torah we created massive infrastructure so people could live in some level of comfort and yeshivas could open and people could run torah we all did all that stuff really just so the jews could learn torah we want to get scar and get reward for that hashem's response to them is your fools everything you did you did for yourself so you're not going to get any scar for that i think two questions sort of jump out at you first of all i mean what exactly is this conversation just generally why they what are they trying to accomplish and secondly or they think they're going to be able to fool or lie to hashem about what exactly it was they were doing but hashem doesn't know what they had in mind when they were actually building these things i mean what exactly are are they thinking they're going to convince hashem that they're entitled to some sort of a scar of reward so the brisker of explains the following hashem's answer to them is really very telling he doesn't call them liars he calls them fools and the reason is the following rabbis teach us and this is something we'll see again in when we start in participation in a couple of weeks that hashem created the world really in order that the jewish people could involve themselves in learning torah and in keeping the torah everything about the world was for that purpose that an order of the jews could learn torah now we know hashem doesn't make things for nothing he doesn't do duplicates he doesn't do things unnecessarily so that means that every single thing that exists in the world somehow some way is connected with the jews ability to learn torah now the thing is at this point in time it's impossible for us to know because there's certain things we look at us can't possibly understand you know i can't tell you why you know with tick-tock versus snapchat versus instagram is necessary for the jews to learn torah no idea but after mashiach comes after that great revelation that we're dominating for every single day finally happens at that point in time it'll be obvious at that point in time we'll be able to see all the things that have happened up until that point in time throughout the course of human history and say oh yeah i see now how that was necessary to enable the jewish people to learn torah and so the nations of the world are going to see the same thing and so they're going to go to hashem and say hey you know it turns out that that thing that i created that thing enabled the jewish people to learn torah and as a result i should get some scar i should get some reward for it and hashem says no you're you fool you didn't do that for them you did it for yourself and if you did it for yourself i'm not going to give you any scar any reward for that it's like the guy you know he's littering and throwing something out the window and somehow you know chuck's a you know half full water bottle out the window and he's littering but it turns out that you know he puts out a fire with that water i mean like come on you're not gonna get any reward for that you would you know just do whatever you did for your own self since you want that scar you have to have it in mind had it the intention that what you were doing was for the benefit of the jewish people so hashem says not going to scar for that so the nations of the world will say to hashem okay well look give us a mitzvah give us something we can do now and that will be able to get scar to get reward for doing that mitzvah now now of course putting aside for a second the fact that you know only now after at that point past some shiats come they wanted mitzvot and they weren't doing anything up until then but okay putting that aside hashem says okay no problem i have a mitzvah an easy mitzvah now of course if you were gonna pick a mitzvah that you would think would be the mitzvah that hashem would give the nations of the world at that point in time this is a pretty long list you can imagine yourself what that mitzvah might be but hashem says i have a mitzvah an easy one it's called sukkah and the gemara says sort of interjecting why is it called an easy mitzvah magmar says because it's a mitzvah and which we'll translate that for now as meaning something that doesn't require any financial outlet the words can sell and kiss typically mean uh cost so it's an easy missile because it doesn't really have any cost associated with it we'll come back to that later since this is an easy missile so immediately the nations of the world go and they make asuka and what does hashem do he makes it very hot and they're sitting in the sukkah it's very hot and they walk out and they kick the sucker down on the way out and again the gemara says well but okay there's a certain halakhah that if a person is mitstire if he's uncomfortable he's distressed from sitting in the sookie he's not required to sit in the sukkah and whereas that's true but they didn't work they need to kick it down they could have just left the fact they kicked it down and not their sucker down was the problem okay so again you have this kind of strange conversation discussion that's going on within hashem in the nations of the world and rakhine freelander asks two basic questions first again why sukkah right you're making the top 10 list most important myths you know fill in shabbos matzah you know lots of different misses you can think of why sukkah sukkah doesn't necessarily strike me as the one that would even make your top 10 list and number two why is the focus on the fact that sukkah is an easy midsole because any buckingham kiss seems to not have any cost or outlay associated with it no i mean okay not sure should i satisfy to a lot of it a lot of mixes why specifically is that the reason that hashem calls it an easy mitzvah i think lastly we can ask the maybe the most obvious question why would a cutter spark why would hashem make it so hot that they were able to leave and he's giving them mitzvah what's the point of doing it then he's going to turn around and make it they wouldn't even necessarily need to sit in the sukkah so what exactly is this conversation this exchange that's going on seeing hashem the nations of the world so as freelancer explains the starting point is i think for most of us we think of mitzvos and we generally think that there's two categories there's positive misses it's just that we are hashem tells us he wants us to do again putting on fulfilling you know a classic example do something and there's negative myths things where hashem says don't do them and that's kind of how we generally categorize the mythos in the torah but there's actually another way to categorize mitzvahs entirely and that's what i would call called category one which is explicit mixes and then category two which are implicit mixes here's what that means an explicit mitzvah is positive or negative but it's something hashem says do or don't do but he tells us specifically to do it or to not do it category 2 are things that hashem doesn't tell us to do it one way or the other but the things that we may need to do and if we do them with the right intention then they become a missile and here's what i mean hashem created us in a way that we need to eat we need to sleep so if you're sitting down to eat and you're doing it just because you know you're hungry or you know maybe you're not even hungry but this food is good and you want to enjoy it that's fine but that's not a mitzvah that's just doing something that you want to do because you want to do it but if you decide that you're going to eat really because you're more focused on the fact that as a human being if we don't eat we can't function and if we can't function then we can't do mithsos then we can't serve hashem we can't do the things that he wants us to do if that's your intention behind eating for example then that eating is elevated it's no longer just eating now you're actually doing a mitzvah because you're doing something to enable you to serve hashem and the same thing is true with sleeping right why do you go sleep at night i'm exhausted i had a long day i want to go to sleep okay or it's look i had a long day and i want to go to sleep because tomorrow morning i have to get up because i want to go dobbing i have to get up cause i want to go learn or even more so you know you go to work why do we go to work because it's my job you know i want to be able to have money to spend and i want to be able to get fulfillment in my career that's all fine but a person's mindset is you know i actually go to work because hashem gave me an obligation to support my family when you think about working that way and that's your goal and your mindset when you go to the office every day or wherever it is you go for work now you're actually not just working now you're serving hashem now you're doing mitzvahs and in fact the rambam says a person who has this mentality turns out he's serving hashem all day long he doesn't necessarily need to be involved in what again category one obvious explicit mythos he's doing things that everyone else is doing you know he imagined you have two guys who have the same job and they're both you know they take the same lunch break and they eat the same food and doing all the same stuff throughout the day one guy is doing it because that's just what people do so that's why he's doing it and another guy is doing it because you know hashem wants me to do these things i have to eat notice i can function to serve hashem i have to go to work and make money because i have to support my family because that's an obligation that hashem gave me all of a sudden these guys are doing the exact same thing living the exact same lives from the outside one of them's just living his life and one of them's serving hashem all day every single thing that he's doing is suddenly transformed into a mitzvah i mean it's a completely different way to view your life you know especially you know i know for a lot of guys they leave yeshiva and they feel like well you know when you're in yeshiva you're sitting and learning torah all day so it's obvious that you're serving hashem that's true and obviously sitting in learning torah all day is a tremendous important thing as we said before i should have created the world in order that jews could be involved in learning torah so sitting a learning tower all day is obviously an incredibly important thing but you leave yeshiva and you go to work that doesn't mean that you check your judaism at the door and you say okay so i'm not really serving hashem all day and i'll try to make some time during the day to dive in and i make some time during the day to try to learn maybe do a little bit of mitzvos all important stuff of course but that doesn't mean that the time you spent working is any less important and it doesn't mean that the time you spent working isn't also serving hashem you are serving hashem as long as what you're doing is for the purpose of serving hashem because these are things we have to do you know i don't want to take this concept a little bit too far but you you could if a person takes a vacation and they really you know sometimes they take vacations because they're just nice to not have to work but the person is really burnt out from work and say i need to take a day off i cannot keep doing this i need some time just relax that relaxation time can actually be a mitzvah because the fact is you're doing it for the purpose of enabling yourself to be able to serve hashem by working this is a completely different way to view the world and this is the way that the rambam is saying this is what you can do you can view the world this way and live your life this way we are serving hashem every minute of every day now with this concept in mind i think that we can then really start to reframe a little bit what exactly was going on in this conversation between the nations of the world and hashem see the nations of the world looked at that point after mashiach comes after the revelation that hashem should be soon happens and they say oh look all those things were clearly intended to help the jewish people learn torah al gore stands up i created the internet sorry a little you know debate night humor i i deserved scar for that and that says no no it may have turned out that way but that wasn't your intention that's a category two mitzvah you want to get scar for the things that you're doing that just happen to work out for the things that aren't explicit mitzvahs that aren't in category one it's all about your intention it's all about what your mindset is and if you're not thinking about doing it for the purpose of serving hashem you don't get scarred for that that's hashem really pulling the strings so the nations will say okay so hashem give us a category one mitzvah give us an explicit mitzvah that it doesn't really matter what our kawana what our intent is just give us something that we can do that's an explicit midfielder well do you tell us what to do we'll do it and we'll get scar for that so hashem who of course is a native he wants to do good for all of his creations says no problem i'm going to give you a mitzvah called sukkah now sukkah i think is unique in one particular regard it's one of the few or maybe one of the only mitzvas that actually falls into both category one and category two it's category one because it's explicit hashem says sit in the sukkah but it's category two because how do you actually fulfill the myth when you're sitting in the sukkah by eating by drinking by sleeping by doing the things that you do in your normal life so it combines both these two concepts it's explicit and you actually fulfill it by living your life normal what you would sit in the cooking with your friends you're schmoozing you're eating take a nap you sleep in the sukkah these are all parts of normal life that on their own are not explicit category 1 mitzvos but they are now because it's being done in the sukkah and that makes sukkah extremely unique but there's something else that makes it a little even deeper we said hashem said it was an easy mitzvah why because the mitsubishi now the truth is having just purchased a new sukkah i wouldn't say that there isn't any expensive outlet i mean the truth is actually kind of expensive to come up with the money if they actually put a sukkah together so what does hashem mean what does it mean so the truth is by freelander explained you can actually translate the serum kiss slightly differently means missing and kiss means like a purse like a money bag so he's throwing kiss you put those two words together and typically it means it's you know missing money meaning it costs you something but the word kiss purse is actually something that it's called that because what does it do with a purse or a money bag you put money in it it holds things meaning it gets something the kiss itself is something that that receives by putting something in it so he saw him kiss means it's missing the element of receipt i'm missing the concept of getting something out of it put another way in buckingham kiss means it's not a mitzvah that has any lack on our part i mean we get something from it right fulfilling the mitzvah of sukkah is done by us getting by us eating drinking sleeping getting physical benefit physical pleasure physical enjoyment that's how you fulfill the mix of sukkah what hashem is telling the nations of the world is it's easy for you to do because you live in it and it doesn't take anything from you you don't have to give anything up all you need to do is live your life the way you normally do it but just do it in the sukkah and that's what makes it an easier mitzvah see and this actually gets to the core of what judaism is all about i think a lot of people make the mistake of assuming that spirituality requires giving things up right if you want to actually grow spiritually the only way to do it is to deny yourself to say i'm not going to enjoy this i'm going to put this aside we had this vision in our head you know some holy man sitting in a you know maybe in a basement or somewhere or something you know mountaintop in tibet which basically completely renounced any sort of worldly pleasures i i have nothing to do with the world i'm just going to sit and be spiritual only and ignore my physical self that's not judaism it's not what hashem wants from us what hashem wants from us is to enjoy the things that he's created for our benefit and that means that there are physical pleasures that hashem created he wants us to enjoy them now of course there's limits and if all you're doing is getting physical pleasure you're missing something but denying physical pleasure in its entirety that's missing something and you see this concept actually shows up many places throughout the tell room one example the concept of the nazir somebody who takes a vow that he's not going to be drinking wine when he finishes his term of his nazir term he has to bring a carbon kata or a sacrifice a sin sacrifice why is that so one explanation is because by taking a vow saying i'm not going to have any pleasure whatsoever from something that hashem created that that's actually a sin it's not vera you're not supposed to do that hashem is not looking for us to really eschew all the physical pleasures that he created in the world you know this story is told about the assumption rafal hirsch that he wanted to go on a walk and he wanted to go see the alps and his students asked him like everybody what are you doing i mean why don't you want to just sit and learn torah why are you going for a walk see the alps and he said because i'm going to finish my term time on this planet i'm going to get up there and hashem's going to say to me so did you see my elf there's physical pleasures that hashem created he wants us to enjoy them and it's not the case that the only path to spirituality the only path to growth and closes with hashem is through saying i'm not going to have any physical pleasures whatsoever in fact just as sort of a as a reference point if you're really interested um the book what the angel taught you by iraq weinberg has ended his essay on the five levels of pleasure i highly highly recommend it we go to the concept of understanding what it is that i shouldn't want us to have physical pleasure and to get benefit from the world that he created and the thing is this is a mistake that a lot of people make and it can really lead you to something very dangerous because it can if you don't recognize the importance of this and you think that denying physical pleasures is the only way to get close to hashem you're just missing what hashem wants for us and it can actually lead to some dangerous behaviors i mean this is an extreme story no question about it but a close friend of mine who's a therapist had a client who got it in his head that the only way that he could compose hashem was by fasting and so he was fasting every single day he felt he was eating he meant that he was missing something in terms of creating closeness with hashem and ultimately the guy really suffered we went to holding failure at one point i mean it's an extreme case but the idea is not foreign to us and the reason it's not foreign to us i think in part is because if we're using our own logic to try to figure out how we're supposed to serve hashem there's a certain human logic that tells us yeah hashem spiritual we're physical if we want to connect to hashem we need to do it through the spiritual only and we need to push aside the physical whether you and the cruiser he says that's just not what judaism is judaism is not about our thought process the human thought process is how to serve hashem it's about what hashem says is the right way to serve hashem and hashem has told us that he wants us to get enjoyment from the physical pleasures that he created in this world you know one other interesting example of this is the concept of carbon so sacrifices so i think again people often have this view okay sacrifice means you take an animal and you sacrifice it you give it up to hashem and for certain types of sacrifices that's true but for most sacrifices eating the meat of the sacrifice is an integral part of the avodah of the service of the sacrifice and it's through the eating whether it's the person bringing the sacrifice that eats it certain carbonus certain sacrifices or the kohanim who brought the sacrifice to eat but either way it's the eating of the sacrifice that actually helps give the impact of the sacrifice that it brought it's not just about giving over hashem have nothing to do with it it's hashem wants us to enjoy part of it that's part of what the avogadro is and it's so important to always keep that in mind that we can't just let our own sense of i gotta put physical out of my mind i only gotta focus on the spiritual that's not what hashem's expecting from us it's easier for us right it's so much easier in some respects to fast on young kipper and have the right mindset than to eat an error jump kipper and do it the right way because you think uh well you know i know i'm eating but i'm not okay i said mitzvahed i get it but am i really doing it for the right reasons but fascinating keeper nobody has any problems right just like the kasim who came to the piazza that's the rubber he said fasting in them tipper in difficult conditions no problem i get that dancing on simcoe's torah and being happy in difficult conditions enjoying myself and when they don't feel it we have a hard time with that and it's so important to recognize that this is what judaism really is about it's not about just denying ourselves denying ourselves is not the path to spirituality self-control is that's a different schmooze but enjoying the physical pleasure that hashem created in this world is a big part of how we get closer to him now judy you need to take this a step a step further the gemara says that if a jew certain instances will give charity he'll do a mitzvah but he'll say i'm only giving this because i want that you know gossip with someone's son is sick i want my son to get better i want i want the merit of the fact that i'm giving this tadaka and no god forbid the thing he wanted doesn't happen he doesn't have any regret over the fact that he did the mitzvah because a jew at heart recognizes that getting close to hashem is really what it's all about see but for non-jews who serve hashem really through their own what makes sense to them they don't understand that for them it's really transactional it's about oh i'm doing something for hashem i expect something back so if i give charity and i don't get anything out of it i regret that i gave it because it didn't do me any good right i need to do things only social will give me things it's not just about creating a relationship it's transactional but for a jew we recognize that hashem wants to have that relationship with us and since the basis of what we do how we live our lives is about having that relationship even taking even just hashem says i want you to enjoy this okay that i'm enjoying something of course i'm going to do it you know this is a silly analogy but you know you go to your your bubby's house and bubby wants to feed you and you're just not interested in having you know that fifth serving of of whatever it is that bubby's cooked up but you know bubby wants to feed you so okay i think i'll be happy that i'm eating so i'm going to keep eating i'm enjoying it too but you know bubby wants me to eat it so i'm going to eat it hashem he gets such knockoff out of our ability to enjoy ourselves of the things that he's giving us that that itself becomes a mitzvah and i mentioned this once in a class a few months ago that the condition of lady says explicitly that if we only knew how much and enjoyment as it were that hashem gets out of us getting enjoyment of us being happy we just make sure we were happy all the time because it would make hashem so happy and that's really what judaism is all about so if we go back to sukkah and we go back to looking at that original conversation between the nations of the world and hashem realize something so sukkah itself is a mitzvah that both allows us to receive to enjoy because we fulfill the mitzvah by eating and drinking and sleeping inside the sukkah but also it gives nakasa because we're enjoying ourselves in a manner that he wants us to so it makes him happy like sukkah is the ultimate example of a mitzvah that wraps everything about judaism together it's doing what hashem wants it's enjoying ourselves hashem enjoying the fact that we're enjoying it it really is everything about judaism is encapsulated in this mitzvah in fact you see there's a really interesting halacha by sukkah we just mentioned this a little earlier that if you're sitting in the sukkah and you're uncomfortable for example it starts to rain and it's just you know when you're pouring rain or even it's it's incredibly hot you're supposed to go inside and if you don't go inside the shohana says you're a hedgehog you're a fool and the reason is obvious because the whole point of sukkah is to teach us that when it comes to living our lives we need to do it in the way hashem wants us to do the midwest in a way that's going to be enjoyable to us and if something's not working right and it's raining and we're suffering through it she says go inside go in the house now's not the time for that but we have a hard time with this rain is funny in particular specifically you know rain's a little bit of an easy one but even then i know plenty of times i'm sure i'm not the only one you know you're sitting in the circle like it's raining is it raining hard enough i don't know and it's even more so when you know i'm not really an issue this year but you know when it's hot you know sukkos comes out really really early and it's like super hot and you're sitting in the silicon neck i don't know i really misty like we go crazy with ourselves because we don't realize that if we're really uncomfortable the point is we're supposed to go inside actually remember one year it was like it was super hot and first night i sis kind of sweated it out i walked in the shoulder next morning and i was talking about before with my rub before dominating i said yeah gosh it was really it was so hot last night it was really really you know it was hard to sit through and he looked at me like i went inside i'm like why didn't i do it because i didn't have the you know the i wasn't willing to just say to recognize that this is what silk is about when we recognize and is honest with himself we're so worried about the fact that no no if i'm suffering that's when i know i'm serving hashem properly you know it's sort of a you know no pain no gain i'm not suffering through it it's not really serving hashem that's just missing it enjoying ourselves while we're serving hashem that's part of what we're supposed to be doing it's part of what hashem expects from us in fact it's something interesting you know the the the the gemara tells us that the mun that the jewish people ate in the desert would taste like anything they wanted anything they had in mind that's what the mon would taste like so someone was asked the cutsco reva what would happen if i they somebody ate them on and didn't think of anything they had no thoughts whatsoever or what it tastes like and the custard said it would be just like judaism it would have no taste judaism is about being into it and understanding what it is that we're doing and enjoying it yeah there's times for self-control there's times we need to work on ourselves yeah we just went through 40 days of elo and rosh hashanah and young tipper we need to work on ourselves and that takes work but it's not about suffering it's about growing so putting in the effort to make ourselves better that's not the same thing as suffering and people often we conflate these two things and that's what we make the mistake judas is about learning to enjoy serving hashem and so the nations of the world said to hashem you know we need something they wanted a mitzvah and hashem said okay no problem i'm gonna give you a mitzvah requires no special kavanaugh you do it by enjoying the things you guessed in this world and you do it to give hashem and yet the nations of the world couldn't do it now of course they say wait a second that's not fair hashem made it very hot they didn't have to stay in the sukkah that's true but the thing is they kicked the sukkah down on their way out because even after mashiach come and even after there's been that revelation that we know that hashem runs the world they can't wrap their heads around understanding that it's about having the relationship with hashem that's what hashem wants to them it's transactional and if they were puttered from the sukkah their view what do i need such a for so they kicked it down it's not doing anything for me it's not going to give me scar i'm not going to get anything out of not sitting in it so what do i need it for after all that was said hashem was trying to show them you don't understand i want to have a relationship with my creations i want them to relate to me i want them to give me and they give me knockouts by being able to enjoy the things i'm asking them to do and this is what sukis is all about it's about realizing that we can enjoy the physical world and still come close to hashem we can do things that we do and still have a close relationship with hashem and grow in our spirituality through the physical things that we have and i think this really is why sukkos comes immediately after you don't keep her because you can go to yom kippur and you i don't know about you but your paper ends right at the end you just feel awesome you just had this long day you worked hard and you know we have this and talking hashem has just forgiven us and it feels amazing and it can be a little bit easy especially you go straight from that you know to eating you know three bagel or whatever you're gonna have when you break your fast and it can be this sort of immediate letdown you're like oh no no i gotta go back to fasting i gotta go back to you know pushing aside the physical only focusing on the spiritual because i felt so awesome when i was done hashem says you know that's not the way this works you can go through your life and enjoy the physical things that i've created for you i want you to enjoy that and you can still come close to me and hashem wants us to realize that that's the way to live our life but there's one more important point and i think with this i'll wrap it up a really interesting gemara in brachas it says the following in the torah it only actually mentions the fact that we're supposed to say abraham we bench after we've eaten so the kumar asked the question okay we see that you have to make a brother after you've eaten how do you know you have to make a bracha before you've eaten mgmar makes a simple calva homer as well if you have to make a brothel when you're done after you've finished you certainly should make a bracha before you've eaten you've even started okay so it seems like making the bracha afterwards is the more obvious one so the sort of reason that therefore you should make one before okay but let me ask something interesting where it says be seeing you're supposed to make a bracha before you start learning torah how do you know you're supposed to make a brah after you've finished learning torah and the quran says well if you're required to make a brother before you've learned and certainly should be required to make a brother after you've learned so ask seville nagon wait a second which one is it is the blessing before more obvious or is the blessing after more obvious the more seems to try to take it both ways how does that work so he explains with an incredible yasoda about life when it comes to things that are physical the max level of anticipation of enjoyment is really right before you started when you're done okay it was good but it's not as exciting as it was beforehand right they bring that steak in front of you before you take that first bite you're really excited it's like oh this looks amazing smells fantastic color's perfect i'm really going to enjoy this when you're done with that 24-hour steak right at that point you're probably not as excited as you were you're probably wondering why you even ate so much you know at work it was always this way where you know it's a joke that the only reason that you need to go on vacation is because you're going on vacation right when you go on vacation the time leading up to it is amazing you're so excited you're looking forward to it the day you get back that first day back at your desk it's like oh it's almost like the vacation didn't even happen you've forgotten about everything because things that you enjoy they're physical it's before enduring that matters when you're done it's like almost like it didn't even happen you're kind of just forgetting about it so if the torah tells us to bench when we're finished eating clearly before we eat before we've enjoyed that pleasure we need to make a brooklyn when it comes to learning torah when it comes to doing things that are spiritual there's a certain thing that feels better when we're done with it right if you're going to do somebody a favor a guy calls you up and says you know what i need a ride to the airport tomorrow at six o'clock in the morning like okay you know you don't feel great because you're exhausted but when you're done you feel good you did a guy a favor when you sit down and learn torah sometimes you're tired i'm not interested in doing this now but your powers too when you're done with it you feel great because things that are spiritual they stay with you in a sense of accomplishment that doesn't just go away so if you have to make a barakah before you learn certainly you should be thanking hashem after you're done when that sense of accomplishment and feeling good about accomplishing and doing something spiritual sticks with you here's the thing we can live our lives in a way that give us that spiritual high of accomplishing something all the time because we can live our lives recognizing that every single thing that it is that we're doing is what hashem wants us to be doing i'm not just going to work now because i want to make money i'm going to work because hashem wants me to support my family it's a mitzvah for me to do this i'm not just eating this now because it's delicious i'm eating this because actually wants me to enjoy it i'm going to give him knockouts i want to give myself strength so i can serve hashem i'm not just going to the store now because i my wife asked me to do something i'm going to the store because hashem gave me a mitzvah to help my wife with how i was in the house and so i'm suddenly i'm serving hashem now every single minute of every single day can be that spiritual high because we're serving constantly even the physical if we have the right thought the right intent the right mindset we can take things that are completely ordinary and make them extraordinary and make them awesome and we can walk around every single day feeling that constant spiritual high or having accomplished something about us as closer to hashem through the mitzvos that we're doing even the mixes that on the faces that don't necessarily look like mitchus as if all of her brought all about the brothel that if machiavelli next couple of days that we go through circus we take this concept with us and we enjoy circus and we use it as an opportunity to bring ourselves closer to hashem wishing everyone a wonderful youngest