During the first two days of Sukkot, I had to contend with some lousy weather. It was dreary and raining the entire time. In spite of the weather, I decided to sit in the sukkah for both meals on the first day. It wasn't torrential downpour by the time I got around to eating either meal, but it was bad enough where it put a damper on the holiday spirit. Nevertheless, I did not let the weather get the better of me because I wanted to fulfill the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah (לשבת בסוכה). One could also argue that I am a glutton for punishment.
Joking set aside, there is a leniency to be made for when it rains. If it is raining, one is exempt from eating in the sukkah (Mishnah, Sukkah 28b). [One says kiddush and hamotzi before going indoors (Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, 135:3)]. The Shulchan Aruch expands upon the Mishnah and says that if it is too cold or it is too uncomfortable to sit in the sukkah, one is exempt (Orach Chayim 639:2). Even if it stops raining and the sukkah is still wet, one is still exempt from sitting in the sukkah (Shevet Hakehati 1:199).
This leniency caught my eye because me living my Jewish life in the 21st-century Orthodox world, leniencies are hard to come by because it seems to get more stringent with each passing year. The leniency caught my eye for another reason: it is the only mitzvah that you can exempt yourself from if you are uncomfortable while doing it. There are some, such as the Chabad Lubavitch, that stay outside even when it is raining. Even so, it is an exception, not a norm. During the yom tov, I asked myself why the leniency was the law.
I was unable to find a more spiritual answer to the question, so I came up with one of my own. Sukkot is referred to as "the time of our joy," and there are multiple reasons for that title. I certainly think that part of going inside in the event of rain is to maintain the joyous nature of the holiday. However, I think there is something more to it. The sukkah represents the fragile and ephemeral nature of life (Rashbam), and because of that, we are supposed to find joy in uncertainty.
At the same time, the leniency teaches us something about how we interact with our environment. I recently read two relevant self-help books: Willpower Doesn't Work and Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits. It got me to think about the role our environment plays, and perhaps that we only have so much willpower to exert before we get exhausted. Both books emphasize the idea of making good habits easier to follow [almost to the point of sheer automation] and removing everything in your environment that conflicts with your decisions or goals.
While both books argue the limits of willpower, it nevertheless requires a different sort of willpower to make this work. After all, automating good habits and making it difficult to partake in bad habits requires a structural change. There needs to be at least some initial willpower or motivation to make the change because otherwise, one ends up wallowing in status quo. Change has to take place. A decision to move past the comfort zone has to be made and something has to be done. Looking at personal change from this lens could help better explain why the first step is so hard to take.
For centuries, the sukkah has embodied what those in the field of positive psychology have recently discovered. On the one hand, we do not have control over such things as the weather. On the other hand, we control how we react to the adverse situation. When a less-than-ideal external force comes in and makes a situation more intolerable, we are meant to respond favorably. That is what the leniency teaches us: if are to experience the maximum amount of joy, we have to first recognize the situation we find ourselves in. Then we have to find a way to make the situation better. We then take the courage to act on it. As American author Neale Donald Walsch once said, "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." The questions I can leave you pondering is this: how can you internalize this Sukkot lesson? How can you change your environment to be the best version of you? What are you willing to do step out of your comfort zone and start living your life?
חג סכות שמח!
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