Ya‘arot devash (Honeycombs)

The Meaning of the Sukkah: Exile, for the Whole World Is Only a Temporary Dwelling

The Torah advises us on Sukkot, which is the end of the season of repentance, to accept exile upon ourselves and to consider the entire universe to be a fleeting shadow. Therefore, the Torah commands us to leave our permanent dwelling, and dwell in a temporary one, to show that we are sojourners in the land, with no permanency, and our days are like a shadow, like something that appears and perishes over a single night, that disappears at the mere blowing of the wind. What benefit is there for human beings in all the toil that they do under the sun? Throughout their lives they have their eyes turned heavenward to God, as the sages taught us that the sekhakh [the thatching used to cover a sukkah] should be made in such a way that the stars can clearly be seen through them. And one should direct one’s heart to heaven, so perhaps God will have compassion over one who is brokenhearted and poor, and who knows the lowness of one’s own state, and knows that all one’s time on earth is short and meager every day. Who is it that can escape the vicissitudes of time and the changes of the days? And if one is conscious of this, God will have compassion over the poor soul, and will care for dust and ashes.

And this is deep advice for how to conduct oneself during the seven days of Sukkot, for the divine judgment is still suspended until Shemini Atzeret [a one-day holiday at the end of Sukkot], yet we should rejoice, and feel secure that the judgment will end up good, due to God’s mercy. This is advice for everyone, for the seven days of the festival. However, one who trembles at the word of the King, the King of the Universe, should have this conceptual sukkah not only during the festival of Sukkot, but also the entire year: one should view everything as a temporary dwelling, and live in the shade of the sukkah, and leave the idea of permanent dwellings, and view everything through the eyes of a mere sojourner and guest, and look up to the stars, to place trust in the Lord, and not build luxurious stone houses and regal palaces with floors of various types of marble, and similar earthly pleasures, which expand one’s sense of comfort, and lead to excesses—lust, and greed for money, and various permitted and forbidden actions, even attacking other people for their possessions—one comes to do any action, as long as it is for the purpose of adding to one’s home, one’s mansion. And thus does one’s heart become haughty and proud, and one forgets God, one’s maker.

How good and fitting were the instructions of Jonadab ben Rechab (Jeremiah 35:6) to his descendants, that they should never build houses, but rather live in tents, temporary dwellings, sometimes here and sometimes there. This is also how our ancestors lived; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were tent dwellers. This is what enabled them to have such long lives; for they had no need to worry that fires would destroy their palaces, nor did they fear the sound of the enemy, or famine, or plague, for they could quickly pull up their tent strings and pegs, and travel from one nation to another. This was what Balaam praised, when he saw them dwelling in tents in the wilderness, and said: How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob (Numbers 24:5)—your tents, for we are tent dwellers, like the tents of Kedar; and thus we are like the curtains of Solomon, and happy is our portion in this world and the next.