Having completed Yom Kippur, I pivot from the fasting and chest-thumping of Yom Kippur towards celebrating the time of joy that is Sukkot. Traditionally a harvest festival (Exodus 23:16; Deuteronomy 16:13, 15), the Jewish holiday of Sukkot has two main mitzvot (commandments), one of them being sitting in an dwelling in a sukkah (Leviticus 23:42-43). A sukkah is a temporary booth or hut covered with vegetation that commemorates the time the Israelites spent in the wilderness after the Exodus. You can read more about the particular legalistic requirements of what constitutes as a sukkah here. I do not want to get into the details today because I want to ask a more fundamental question of why Jews dwell in a sukkah in the first place.
The great rabbi Moshe ben Maimón, also known as Maimonides, gives us an answer. In his text The Guide for the Perplexed (3:43), Maimonides states that Passover teaches us about the miracles which G-d wrought in Egypt, whereas Sukkot teaches about the miracles wrought in the wilderness. The moral lesson is "to remember his evil days in his days of prosperity. He will thereby be induced to thank G-d repeatedly, to lead a modest and humble life." Maimonides then goes on to say that Jews "leave our houses in order to dwell in tabernacles (a sukkah), as inhabitants in the dessert do that are in want of comfort."
To recap, Maimonides opines that the end-goal of dwelling in a sukkah is to teach us to live modestly and humbly. The two ways we go about that is to remember the past miracles along with leaving our own homes for a temporary dwelling that is less comfortable than our current homes. So how does dwelling in a temporary hut lead us to be more modest or humble?
In the Mussar text Duties of the Heart, Rabbi Bachya ibn Pakuda teaches that "All virtue and duties are dependent on humility." Another Mussar text, The Ways of the Righteous (ארחות צדיקים), the author teaches that humility is the root of Divine Service. Upon examining various character traits, I found truth in these statements when tying it to the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah:
Gratitude. Having Sukkot be during the harvest time teaches that there are fat years and lean years, much like the story of Joseph teaches. A farmer can control for technique and taking care of crops, but cannot ultimately control for what the yield is or whether there is a drought that year. We are to be humble enough to be grateful for the bounty, regardless of its size. Shifting from pride in our possessions to recognition of the blessings we receive humbles us. To quote Pirkei Avot (4:1), "Who is rich? The one who is satisfied with their lot."
The Jewish philosopher Philo (1 c. CE) takes the gratitude concept further. Maimonides actually got the idea of being in a sukkah to remember the "bad old days" from Philo. Philo says remembering the "bad old days" is a reminder of how far we have come. It can be challenging to appreciate that concept when we are dealing with the worse anti-Semitism since the Holocaust, but recognizing the progress in the overall arc of history and praising G-d for the good in life helps us remain more humble.
Our relation to material wealth. With regards to being modest, the very nature of a sukkah leads to a more modest mindset. Here you have a semi-flimsy structure that is intentionally exposed to the elements of nature. It is designed as to not be luxurious. Modesty is in contrast to luxury because modesty in part is about avoiding excessiveness or extravagance.
As Maimonides points out, entering a sukkah means leaving the comforts of home. The sukkah teaches a lesson about not being obsessed with material wealth. The sukkah is a manifestation of minimalism and a lesson on how to be satisfied with less material wealth. After all, Pirkei Avot (2:8) teaches that "the more possessions [you have], the more worry." Sukkot gives us a spiritual time out to de-emphasize the material to focus on what truly matters. This is not to say that we need to forego material comfort of any sort, but rather that we do not need material extravagance or to be materially focused or obsessed to live a good or happy life. Our actions, character, values, and experiences are worth more than our material wealth.
Impermanence. The Rashbam taught that the sukkah's temporary, fragile structure teaches us about the fragility of our lives, which includes our mortality. Per the previous point, we ultimately are not going to care about how much material wealth we amassed. Most likely, we will care more about the experiences we had and the people with whom we shared those experiences. Realizing how short our lives are is meant to give us pause, as well as a sense of humility.
We are small in comparison to the vastness of the universe and time itself. The sukkah reminds us that even the most seemingly secure and solid aspects of our lives are ultimately temporary. This realization of permanence does not only give us humility. In 2021, I wrote a blog entry about how meditating on death (memento mori) paradoxically brings us more joy because we are more likely to enjoy life's experiences with intensity and motivation when we are aware of how short life is.
Adaptability in the face of vulnerability. Death is not the only form of vulnerability we deal with during Sukkot. Dwelling in a sukkah means being exposed to the elements of nature. What does this teach? No matter what we do to prepare or protect ourselves, there are always forces beyond our control. Reminding us of our limitations amidst the vulnerability teaches us to be more humble and accepting of whatever may come our way. Six years ago, I wrote about how we adapt our environment for optimal performance when things go awry. A couple years later, I wrote a blog entry on how nasty weather during Sukkot gives us an opportunity to expand our comfort zone, thereby enhancing our experiences. Both blog entries came with the theme of learning to adapt to conditions that we previously deemed sub-optimal.
Dealing with ego and arrogance. One beautiful lesson I found from Slovie Jungreis-Wolff from Aish HaTorah is that there is a height limit for a sukkah of 20 amot, which is about 37 feet. Why the height limit? Because when you are so full of yourself, the arrogance does not make room for anyone else in your life, even G-d. She goes on to say that "if you want your life to be filled with love and meaning, discover the gift of humility." Per a quote misattributed to C.S. Lewis, "Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it's thinking of yourself less." The world does not revolve around you. This is not woo-woo spirituality talking. The longitudinal Harvard Study of Adult Development is a good example of showing how social connections and community can be the single most important factor determining happiness and long-term health.
Another aspect of dealing with ego comes from the Rashbam's commentary on why we sit in the sukkah. For him, it is a matter that one's wealth ultimately comes from G-d (Deuteronomy 8:17-18). Rabbi Yitzhak Haboab went as far as saying that this is to remind us that we ultimately should not put our trust in man, but G-d.
Even if we want to make the insight less theocentric or make it completely secular, the sukkah can still provide that lesson that we are not capable of providing or creating everything we need. We can never be truly independent or self-sufficient in the strictest of terms, short of going off the grid and living in the wilderness as a hermit. No one is so talented or has the time to be a mechanic, author, welder, doctor, professor, farmer, flight attendant....you get the idea. The beauty of living in a market-based economy is that we can use comparative advantage in a way where we mutually benefit from voluntary exchanges. By recognizing how interdependent the economy is, it helps us come to terms that we cannot do it all on our own, thereby instilling a sense of humility.
Compassion. A couple of years ago, I argued that one of the spiritual benefits of fasting is that it helps create greater empathy for those who deal with food insecurity. For those who do not experience housing vulnerability year-round, living in a sukkah gives a taste of what an unstable housing situation feels like. That humility can lead to compassion towards those in need (Rabbi David Golinkin).
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