Sukkot: On Joy

The Kotzker rebbe is reported to have said that one of the three things we should learn from a child is how to be happy.

Sukkot would be a good time to learn. For Sukkot is called zeman simkhatenu, “the time of our joy.” The Torah does not just say to rejoice on Sukkot, as on other holidays, but Vehayita akh sameakh. “And you shall be only joyful.” (Deut 16:15).

What can children and Sukkot teach us about the nature of simchah, joy? Three things. First, children are happy partly because everything is new to them. They enjoy the world in a way we can’t anymore with our bored, jaded eyes; they are seeing and experiencing everything for the first time, and it is a great love affair. No wonder they don’t want to go to sleep!

We are too old to enjoy the world in this fresh, excited way. But the fall holiday season gives us an opportunity to experience our own version of that kind of joy. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we are intensely aware of our mortality. God is sealing all of our fates; we could die or we could live. Maimonides says that, in order to facilitate repentance, it is proper during this time to consider each day to be your very last. Going through the High Holidays is like surviving an intense hospital experience or a serious illness. It makes you aware of how lucky you are to be alive and well. And it is this knowledge that leads to a kind of joy, the joy of appreciating life’s preciousness, of living it to its fullest. For children the joy comes from the perspective of a first day of life, but for us, it is the specter of the last day which can make us enjoy life to its fullest.

Sukkot, coming on the heels of these other holidays, only further emphasizes this sense of our vulnerability and mortality. We leave our permanent homes and live outside, exposed to the elements, in a flimsy temporary shed which, by design, must have a faulty roof! The sukkah is meant to make us feel how very vulnerable and temporary we are in this world. And that feeling, oddly enough, leads to joy. It leads to joy because there is no other choice; if we are not joyful today, we may miss our opportunity. Life is too short, and we are too frail, not to enjoy every second of life granted to us. Like children, we jump fully and joyfully into the moment.

Children teach us other things about happiness too. Children know that true happiness is only experienced in relationship. From a young age, a baby will coo and laugh at an interactive grown-up but not at an object. Children want toys, but even more than toys what makes them happy are friends. A boring day off from school turns into a party when a playmate appears.

Relationships are the true source of joy, according to the Torah, too. What is considered the ultimate sound of joy, kol sason vekol simchah? The sound of a bride and groom rejoicing, kol hatan vekol kalah. Sukkot is a time for rejoicing among people, a time for inviting guests, the traditional ushpizin, and for enjoying each other in the intimate space of the sukkah after the repairing of relationships during the High Holidays.

Sukkot also celebrates another relationship. Our relationship with God. Through the High Holidays, we have focused on that relationship and worked to repair it. Now we are ready to enter the huppah, the wedding canopy, our sukkah, and rejoice like the hatan and kalah, the bride and groom, celebrating our good fortune in having achieved such intimacy with God.

Our rejoicing on Sukkot is like the joy of children in a third way as well. Children are happy because they are dependent. They know where their next meal is coming from, the grown up in charge. They are not responsible for themselves, so they don’t worry, either about the past or the future, and, free of worry, they relax and laugh and enjoy life.

On Sukkot, we are invited to do the same thing. We don’t permanently give up responsibility. We spent Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur worrying over our past actions and their consequences and planning our future better actions. But that worry time is over now. What is left is only our sense of dependence on God. We no longer say selakh na, “Please forgive,” but hosha na, “Please save us.” Save us; we are dependent on You. The sukkah, with its negligable roof, is not just a symbol of our vulnerability, but also a symbol of God’s protection, and of our joyful reliance on that protection. God is said to spread out His sukkat shalom, His sukkah of peace over us, giving us a sense of security and calm. As Psalm 27, recited daily this time of year, says: “He will shelter me in His sukkah on an evil day.” One tradition suggests that the sukkot God provided for the Israelites in the desert were actually made of God’s clouds of glory. Sitting in the sukkah under God’s sky instead of our permanent slate roofs, we let go for a moment of our sense of responsibility and control. We let God be in charge, God protect us. And it is then that we are able to experience the joy of children, the carefree joy of a child who knows that all will be taken care of.

Such is the joy of Sukkot, a joy borne not out of our brick homes and all their possessions but out of our experience of vulnerability, relationship and dependence. Ashrei yoshvei veitekha. Happy are those who dwell in Your house.