ONLY JOY

וּלְקַחְתֶּם לָכֶם בַּיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר... וּשְׁמַחְתֶּם לִפְנֵי ה'

You shall take for yourselves the fruit of the citron tree... and rejoice before Hashem.

The tzaddik R' Baruch'l of Mezhibuzh related the following story:

One year in the month of Tishrei, Shlomo Hamelech met the yetzer hara, who looked downcast. "Why are you so unhappy?" Shlomo Hamelech asked.

"This is a miserable time of year for me!" The yetzer hara said bitterly. "The entire month of Elul, Klal Yisrael does teshuva, and my work from the entire year is wasted. Immediately afterwards, they confuse me terribly with the shofar blowing on Rosh Hashana (Rosh Hashana 16b), and then on Yom Kippur, they become like angels and I can't prosecute them in the Heavenly court (Yoma 20a). And it doesn't stop there! For the next few days, they are so busy with mitzvos in preparation for yom tov: building the sukkah, buying arba minim, etc. But Sukkos itself is even worse! They take the lulav and esrog and stab me repeatedly each day (Menachos 62a)! How can I not be sad when I am being tortured so...!"

Exactly a year later, Shlomo Hamelech met with the yetzer hara again. To his surprise, the yetzer hara was in a joyful mood. Shlomo Hamelech asked him, "Last year you were bemoaning your fate during Elul and Tishrei — what changed now?"

The yetzer hara explained, "I figured things out. A ship with thousands of esrogim was en route to a huge Jewish city for Sukkos. I had a great idea — I made a hole in the ship and sent it to its watery grave... along with its holy cargo. My suffering is over!”

But when they met again on Sukkos, the yetzer hara looked despondent once more. "Why are you sad again?" Shlomo Hamelech wondered. “Didn't you sink the ship with all the esrogim?"

"Oh, but you don't know what happened next," the yetzer hara responded glumly. "Somehow, the Jews of the city managed to procure just one esrog. Hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, waited on line for hours just to be able to use the arba minim. Their joy at being able to perform the mitzva was indescribable, and their love for mitzvos hurt me this year more than ever..."

The Rebbe teaches (Likutei Moharan 1:25) that through simcha shel mitzva, we destroy the forces of evil that seek to annihilate us. Sukkos is a time of unique and beautiful mitzvos - while we expend much effort to do the mitzvos in the most mehudar way possible, we must maintain the proper focus of 'וּשְׁמַחְתֶּם לִפְנֵי ה. In this way, we will be'ezras Hashem merit an uplifting and joyous yom tov.

Kuntres Yom Tov Sukkos