Point to Ponder: Living Comfortably in a Temporary Dwelling

The Sukkah Drags Us Out of Material Successes

The Kadmonim teach us that one of the reasons for the mitzvah of sukkah is that it comes at a time of harvest, when a person gathers his produce from the field. This man has toiled and worked throughout the planting and growing seasons, and finally, at long last, the earnings begin to flow in… the cash begins to trickle in. Such a person is liable to become consumed by materialism—since his mind becomes consumed by money and the pursuit of wealth, and he is, in fact, seeing material success.

Precisely at this time, the Ribbono shel Olam wants us not to be dragged into the trap. At a time when our minds may be clouded by the gashmiyus, our minds aren’t working properly, says the Ribbono shel Olam: Davka at this time, I want you to leave your home… make yourself a temporary dwelling, so you will become less materialistic.

The Serenity of Simplicity

The Torah tells us, ויסעו מרעמסס ויחנו בסוכות. In Agra d’Kallah, the Bnei Yisasschar offers the following beautiful insight. In Ramses, we know, everything the Yidden built soon fell apart. This alludes to material pursuits, which also have no durability… they never last. A person works, he invests, he thinks he’s building something, but nothing remains in the end.

For this reason, we were given the mitzvah of sukkah—to sit in a temporary dwelling—to show us that it’s okay when our gashmiyus isn’t perfect. It’s enough to have a temporary home. The provisions are minimal… there’s a chair, a table… and not much room for excessive material objects.

Says the Bnei Yisasschar: The more ויסעו מרעמסס, the more a person distances himself from gashmiyus, then the more ויחנו בסוכות, he will attain more serenity and peace of mind for avodas Hashem, and he won’t feel the need to accumulate extras and luxuries.

When Livelihood Becomes Life

Often, a person invests his entire energy into his parnassah and material success, and this is where he derives his entire chiyus. He mamash becomes tethered to Olam HaZeh. When we ask him why he does this, he says, “What do you mean? We need parnassah!” And he’s right. We do need certain things. But when we look back, we will see that he started out like everyone else, doing what he needed to for parnassah in a normal context… but then the קליפת נוגה became involved, and he became attached to gashmiyus and his pursuit of it.

This kelipah comes when we do something that isn’t wrong; it’s acceptable and permitted, but when we become attached to it, then it becomes a problem. We can perform the same actions with apathy and aloofness; instead, we choose to sink into it.

The way we can ascertain our own state is by ascertaining the source of the animation of our nefesh and our chiyus. This is the big tell whether we deviated…. If the gashmiyus overtook a person’s desires and yearning, it’s everything he talks about and thinks about, then we know he has gone off course.

What Stirs the Soul?

Chazal have taught us that שיחת חולין של תלמידי חכמים צריכה לימוד, the mundane talk of a talmid chacham requires study and analysis. Why is this? Because the idea is to see what animates him when he isn’t learning, when he’s engaged in mundane matters. This is when we see what matters to him and what excites him. For a talmid chacham, it will usually be something elevated—and that is what we must study and internalize.

Every person becomes animated or excited when we touch upon “his” core. Sometimes, we’re talking to a person about this and that, and suddenly, he comes alive… filled with excitement. What happened? We touched his nekudah, his sensitive spot! We must know this person, his character, and his past, to understand why he just became excited. If we know him, we’ll know that this is “his thing…” his entire chiyus is tied to this topic….

A Reminder Not to Pursue Olam HaZeh

But the Ribbono shel Olam saves us from becoming overly excited about material matters by reminding us not to pursue קנאה תאוה וכבוד so much. Sure, we must do what we need to do… but we should not pursue it with such excitement… rather, when we run, it should be towards Him….

The best remedy for this is when we pick up a person and place him into a simple, temporary dwelling. Of course, that is effective only when the person remembers to internalize the light and illumination from this mitzvah; as the Sfas Emes says: our דעת (knowledge of, and connection to Hashem) for the entire year is rooted in the mitzvah of sukkah. This means that the knowledge of a person, the matters to which he feels connected, and the essence of the person are all rooted in Sukkos. This mitzvah elevates a person and doesn’t allow him to become immersed in his gashmiyus and be animated by it.

When Attachment Goes Too Far

Every person has things he’s attached to, and some of them are good attachments… there’s nothing wrong with them. The problem is when the attachment goes too far; then he’s too strongly connected to it.

For example, it can happen that a mother’s relationship with her daughter is extremely deep, but it becomes an unhealthy relationship—to the extent that when the daughter gets married, the mother doesn’t know whether to be happy or sad. This is unhealthy, because the Ribbono shel Olam has arranged the world in a way that there are relationships—but if it gets out of hand, it’s not good for either side. A child cannot remain tied to her mother’s apron forever….

In cases where the relationship goes too far, experts must become involved and separate them a bit. Sometimes, the couple must be sent to live overseas for a few months. They must build their own relationship, away from the shadow of the parents….

A Cure for Our Attachment to Materialism

Similarly, when a person has an unhealthy attachment to gashimyus; it started out normally enough, but he soon became completely attached to it in an unhealthy way. Just as in an unhealthy relationship, one person must constantly know what the other is thinking and doing… so too, this person becomes obsessed with his bank account…. He must always and constantly peek to see what’s happening there. But you just checked it an hour ago! But he wants to see it again… he wants to follow the numbers.

This person may have heard a deep mussar derashah and experienced a Yom Kippur; well-meaning people tried to speak with him, but the unhealthy relationship simply runs too deep. He can’t untether himself…. In such a case, it’s not enough to talk; we must pick him up and place him into the sukkah. Let go of your home… let go of your mind, which races with how to acquire more and more gashmiyus.

When we say “gashmiyus,” we don’t mean simply money—money is just one manifestation of it. Gashmiyus means to be obsessed and concerned only with what the other person is thinking. This person seeks to draw his chiyus not from kirvas Elokoim, and not from the truth, but from peripheral and unimportant things. “Gashmiyus” refers to the countless manifestations of קנאה תאוה וכבוד, and we must find the way to detach ourselves from our unhealthy obsession with it.

This is the avodah that the Ribbono shel Olam wants from us—and when we do it, we will begin living! When we internalize the דעת offered by the sukkah, and when we begin to know and understand the world as it really is, we will begin to feel blissful and fortunate. And then, it is fine for us to return to our permanent abode—because we have been cleansed of our unhealthy attachment, and we’re now focused on Torah, avodah, tefillah, bitachon, teshuvah, chessed, and every other good thing that a Yid must be focused on. We simply became healthier people!

Remember Why We’re Here

This is the simple reason for the mitzvah that the Kadmonim teach us we must keep in mind as we’re sitting in this temporary dwelling, and this is what it is important to remember throughout the Yom Tov—even after the initial excitement for the sukkah of the first night wears off. We must ask ourselves: Why am I sitting in the sukkah?

The Bach (Orach Chaim Siman 625:1) rules that whenever the Torah tells us to perform a mitzvah “למען, because”… then we are obligated to keep in mind that reason as we perform the mitzvah, otherwise it has not been properly fulfilled.

Can We Ever Understand a Mitzvah?

This ruling from the Bach is a great chiddush, because all the sefarim hakedoshim teach us that the reasons behind the mitzvos are simply beyond our grasp and understanding. To the contrary, they teach, the greatest level is to perform the mitzvah without understanding—simply to fulfill the command of Hashem. In fact, there’s a well-known incident relating that the Ba’al Shem Tov once hid all the kavannos from his ba’al tokeah at the last minute—because the primary kavannah must be that “Hashem commanded us to blow.” Even when a person does understand some of the deeper meaning behind the mitzvos, the ultimate kavannah is not to think about the meaning that he understands—but to perform the ratzon Hashem with bittul.

This is a fundamental yesod that was often espoused by chassidim—because a person must be reminded how small his mind is, and how little his grasp is in the mitzvos. Don’t limit your mitzvos to the grasp of your mind! It is so much higher than this!

If so, when the Bach tells us that we’re required to have in mind that the Ribbono shel Olam fashioned for us a sukkah from the ענני הכבוד, which is a wonderful insight into this mitzvah, doesn’t this limit the mitzvah?!

When the Mitzvah Is Personal

The answer to this question is quite simple. When it comes to something that’s essential and fundamental to Yiddishkeit, we must know it and keep it in mind. That, of course, isn’t the whole essence of the mitzvah. But there are some thoughts that are critical to keep in mind always. When the Ribbono shel Olam commanded us to put on tefillin—which contain the parashiyos related to living a life with Hashem at its center—He told us, “I gave you this commandment so you will live with these fundamental foundations and always remember it… tether it to your heart and mind.” Surely, at the heart of this mitzvah is the awareness of these tenets.

The Ribbono shel Olam expressly wanted us to keep these things in mind as we don tefillin. If a person will say, What do we know? … We have no inkling of this mitzvah…, that is not right. It’s like a person who learns Gemara without understanding a word, and he tells himself, “Who am I to even attempt to understand the Ribbono shel Olam’s Torah?” When it comes to something important and crucial to our success, we’re certainly obligated to understand it—for the reason we were given the mitzvah is precisely to internalize these truths.

Learning to Live with Less

Say the Kadmonim to us: The Ribbono shel Olam has given us a mitzvah of sukkah. Leave your permanent abode and go into a temporary dwelling. Accustom yourself to it…. It’s fine like this… even if everything isn’t “just so.” Even if there are some ramshackle walls… it’s okay….

Sometimes, a nagging and aggravating thought runs through a person’s mind: All my friends already bought homes, and I am sitting here in a rented apartment. It’s not normal… I need my own place. It used to suit my needs, but now, we have completely outgrown the space. Every time the married kids come for Shabbos, it’s a whole issue… it simply can’t go on this way.

The truth is, however, that everything is just fine. These things tend to matter when we’re looking at what other people have. If the Ribbono shel Olam wants to, He can give you everything right now. For the moment, everything is fine, everything is normal, and everything is okay. It may be a temporary dwelling, but it’s just fine.

Lowering Expectations

When a person buys a business-class ticket, and he gets a bed that is about a quarter the size of his usual bed, he’s generally very satisfied with this. Why? Because, for a temporary dwelling, it’s not bad. He doesn’t expect more. He can manage fine with it—especially in contrast to the other passengers sitting behind him in economy class.

The mitzvah of sukkah teaches us that we can live with less. And if so, we can be happy with what we have. After all, all we need is a place to make a nice Shabbos meal, and we have that. Imagine that we came to this neighborhood for a Shabbos, and someone provided us with this apartment. There are nice neighbors, there are shuls and groceries in the area, it’s mamash gevaldig.

Thinking this way helps us lower our expectations. It spares us from bitterness and sadness, as well as being excessively immersed with gashmiyus. The Ribbono shel Olam can and wants to send all of us peace of mind—but we must do our part to distance ourselves from the pursuit of those things that will never bring us happiness anyway (as the aforementioned Agra d’Kallah teaches us).

This is what we must take with us from the mitzvah of sukkah. This is a time of harvest, when a person gathers his profits. If we will keep this sentiment in mind, the Ribbono shel Olam will enable us to keep this דעת—knowledge and awareness—long after we have returned to our permanent abode. This awareness will accompany us, help us, and bring us joy throughout the entire year.