One of the unities that many today aspire to achieve is national unity—the mending of the rift between the different factions of first the Jewish people as a microcosm of humanity and then of all humanity. This aspiration is most noble: the Jewish people are called “one nation on earth,” just as God is described as one. Our unity is meant to reflect the sublime unity of “Havayah is one.”
The problem is that the different people who aspire to unity usually focus only on one of the types of unity we have enumerated, or at most two; but acknowledging the need for all four types is almost never advocated. The festival of Sukkot and the commandment of the Four Species are a reminder that the truly exalted unity is the unity of all unities. Ironically, if one limits oneself to a single unity, one does not rise above the world of multiplicity at all.
When we attempt to apply the four types of unity we have presented on the national level, they become four methods for uniting all types of people in the nation, as follows: According to the myrtle (haddasim), unity should be based on a common origin and nothing more; according to the willows (aravot), we are unified by the mere fact of sharing life; the palm-branch (lulav) declares that the main thing is that we have a shared purpose; and the citron (etrog), in its quiet way, argues that all that matters is that we understand and empathize with one another.
Interestingly, this connects to the famous interpretation that the Four Species represent four types of Jews, based on the principle that taste symbolizes Torah and fragrance symbolizes good deeds. We can see that each type of unity we have enumerated corresponds exactly to the type of Jewish individual that parallels it:
- The willow (aravah), which has neither taste nor fragrance, symbolizes people who neither study Torah nor perform good deeds. These are individuals who desire only the maximal expansion of individual freedom, so that each person can act for themselves and their household without others interfering. Naturally, the only type of unity they aspire to is that we manage to live side by side and maintain a common economy. Nothing more is necessary.
- The myrtle (hadas), which has fragrance but lacks taste, symbolizes those who perform good deeds but are not learned in Torah. Being kind individuals who dwell among their people, they tend to feel part of the Jewish people but view their nationality as a matter of common origin and history—an extended family, nothing more.
- The palm-branch (lulav), which produces the date fruit that has taste but no fragrance, symbolizes people who study Torah but do not engage in good deeds. As they are meticulous in their grasp of the Torah, they believe that the main thing capable of uniting the nation is a shared purpose—their convergence around the service of God as learned from the Torah.
- Finally, the citron (etrog), which possesses both taste and fragrance, symbolizes the most refined individuals, who have both Torah and good deeds. These people manage to combine the perception of the people’s reality with the perception of its shared purpose. Like the individuals likened to a date-palm, they desire to see our people united around the service of God, but like those who resemble the myrtle branches, they are sensitive to the complex reality of our people, which requires familial acceptance of everyone. They understand that this convergence will happen when it does, and every individual will join it from their own place and in their own way. (However, perhaps the main thing lacking for these individuals is the understanding that the willow innately knows about constructing a shared home in the earthly and simple sense of the word...).
Naturally, each of the species and the type of individuals they represent tend to prefer its own approach to the exclusion of the others. But during Sukkot, we take them all together. By doing so, we are reminding ourselves that ultimately, all these forms of unity complement each other, and only if we manage to uphold all of them can we attain true unity.
