The Festival of Sukkos – The Joy of the Son Who Returned to His Father the King | The Meaning of the Holiday in Light of Chassidus

00:00 The Frierdiker Rebbe related that when he was a little boy, he sat with his father in the sukkah at a farbrengen. He was seven years old, and he heard his father say to the chassidim sitting crowded together in the sukkah: “The festival of Sukkos is called ‘the time of our rejoicing.’ ‘Our rejoicing’ is plural. The joy belongs to both of us; we are both happy.” He was a little boy, and he did not quite understand who “both of us” meant—which two people his father, the Rebbe, was saying were happy. It was very, very late, in the middle of the night, when they left. The night was chilly and a little rainy, and there was mud. Holding his father’s hand, he asked, “Tatte, tell me, who are the two of us whose rejoicing this is?” Did he mean his father and mother? He thought perhaps “both of us are happy” meant his parents. The Rebbe Rashab told him: “I meant the two of us: Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people. ‘The time of our rejoicing’—the joy of both of us. We rejoice in Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu rejoices with us.” In other words, he explained that we have just come through the holy days, the Days of Awe: Rosh Hashanah, the Ten Days of Teshuvah, and Yom Kippur. After Yom Kippur, when we received forgiveness and pardon, we drew close again to our Father in Heaven, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu drew close to us again. That is when this great joy arose. In fact, he said, the joy is twofold. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is happy, and we are happy. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is happy in His own right, and He is happy that we have come home to Him—the king’s son has returned home. And we, too, are happy in our own right, and happy that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has accepted us. So the joy is twofold, a doubled joy. Today, then, we’ll talk about the joy of Sukkos, “the time of our rejoicing,” and what exactly that means for us. How do we carry this joy through the entire

02:20 year? It is well known, and written in the books of Chassidus, that the festivals of the month of Tishrei give us strength for the entire year. They are all-encompassing festivals. That means that from each of the festivals during Tishrei, a Jew draws energy and strength for the festivals throughout the year. Take Rosh Hashanah, for example: we receive yiras Shamayim for the whole year. Rosh Hashanah is the time when a Jew accepts the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven and yiras Shamayim, and we carry that with us throughout the year, so that we can truly accept the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven and be Jews who fear Heaven. On Yom Kippur, a Jew receives the strength to do teshuvah throughout the year. On Sukkos, we receive the strength for joy—the joy of a mitzvah—for the entire year. Simchas Torah gives us the joy of Torah for the whole year. So what exactly is the deeper meaning of “the time of our rejoicing”? We say that we rejoice with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu rejoices with us. There is an interesting, wonderful Midrash on Parshas Emor. The Midrash says: Let’s look at what the Torah says about the festivals as times of rejoicing. Pesach, Shavuos, and Sukkos are all called festivals of rejoicing: “You shall rejoice on your festival.” There is a mitzvah to rejoice on all three pilgrimage festivals. But when we look in the Torah, the Midrash says, we find that the word “rejoicing” does not appear even once in connection with Pesach. There is an obligation to rejoice because of “You shall rejoice on your festival,” but that verse is not written in the passage about Pesach. In all the Torah passages describing the festival of Pesach—in Parshas Emor, Parshas Re’eh, and Parshas Pinchas—the word “rejoicing” does not appear. For Shavuos, the word “rejoicing” appears once, I believe toward the end of Parshas Re’eh. And in connection with Sukkos, the word appears three times: once in Parshas Emor and twice in Parshas Re’eh. What is the reason, asks the Midrash? The Midrash gives a very simple answer. On Pesach, we still don’t know what

04:50 will happen with the harvest. It is the month of spring. The grain is barely beginning to take shape, and we still don’t know what will become of it, so the joy is not complete. By Shavuos, the harvest has begun, so there is already some reason to rejoice. Sukkos comes after a person has gone through the entire grain harvest and grape harvest, and gathered all the fruit. Over the summer, there has also been time for the fruit to dry in the fields and for everything else that needs doing. Then the produce is brought into the home. The joy is complete, and that is why the word “rejoicing” appears in the Torah three times specifically for Sukkos: the joy encompasses what happened on Pesach, what happened on Shavuos, and Sukkos itself. So it is a threefold joy. That is the Midrash. Now, of course, this is the straightforward explanation, and it is true in its own right. The Torah did, after all, establish the yearly festivals according to the physical growing season. In Eretz Yisroel and much of the world, this really is the season when fruit grows. A Jew thanks Hakadosh Boruch Hu and rejoices that He has given us, boruch Hashem, what we need to live: food, a livelihood, and a harvest. A Jew rejoices “in all the good.” But we know that everything in the physical world also has spiritual meaning. The three pilgrimage festivals of the year, and our rejoicing over the harvest, also represent inner joy, spiritual joy. In particular, as Chassidus explains, this is the inner joy a Jew feels in the connection of the Jewish people with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So if we consider the inner harvest, the Jewish people themselves are also called a kind of produce. What does the verse say? The Jewish people are called “the first of His produce.” In other words, the Jewish people are considered Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s produce. “Those who come from Yaakov will take root; Yisroel will bud and blossom, and fill the face of the earth with produce.” That is a verse in Yeshayahu, also read as the haftorah of Parshas Shemos, which compares the Jewish people to produce. The Torah, too, is called produce. In connection with the Torah, we also find language describing it as the produce of, of, of the Jewish people—of the Jew. So we find the ideas of produce and fruit in connection with both the Jewish people and the Torah of Yisroel. When we speak about celebrating the festivals of the year and rejoicing over the harvest, then, we are of course also speaking about the spiritual harvest. Pesach is the festival of spring, Shavuos is the festival of the harvest, and Sukkos is the festival of gathering in. So today we want to look more deeply and try to understand what these seasons really represent, and how that relates to these three festivals. Then we will also understand the joy: what it means that the word “rejoicing” is not yet written in connection with Pesach; that for Shavuos it appears once; and that for Sukkos it appears not once or twice, but precisely three times. Three appearances of the word “rejoicing”—not a doubled joy, but a threefold joy. If we simply look at the Jewish people and their history across these three festivals, we’ll begin to understand it. Pesach is, in fact, the festival when the Jewish people were born. If Pesach is called the month of spring, the festival of spring, because the grain begins to ripen, then that is essentially what happened to the Jewish people: they began to develop as a people on Pesach. Before Pesach, Hakadosh Boruch Hu had already begun to perform miracles for the Jewish people in Egypt. Moshe Rabbeinu comes to the Jewish people and tells them, “We are going to leave Egypt.” And the

07:07 The Jewish people are considered Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s crop. “In days to come, Yaakov will take root; Yisroel will blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with produce.” This verse in Yeshayahu, which is also in the haftorah of Parshas Shemos, compares the Jewish people to a crop. The Torah, too, is called a crop. In connection with Torah, we also find language describing the Torah as the crop of the Jewish people, of the individual Jew. So we find this idea of crops and fruit in connection with both the Jewish people and the Torah of Yisroel. When we speak about the festivals—times of year when we celebrate and rejoice over the harvest—we are, of course, also speaking about a spiritual harvest. Pesach is the Festival of Spring, Shavuos is the Festival of the Harvest, and Sukkos is the Festival of Ingathering. Today, we want to look more deeply at what these seasons represent and how they relate to the three festivals. Then we will also understand the references to rejoicing: Why is rejoicing not yet mentioned in connection with Pesach? For Shavuos, rejoicing is mentioned once, while for Sukkos it appears not once or twice, but three times. Three mentions of rejoicing—not double rejoicing, but triple rejoicing. If we simply look at the history of the Jewish people at these three festivals, we can begin to understand this. Pesach is the festival on which the Jewish people were born. When we call Pesach the Festival of Spring, referring to the time when the crop begins to ripen, that is essentially what happened to the Jewish people. On Pesach, the Jewish people began to mature as a nation. Before Pesach, Hakadosh Boruch Hu had already begun performing miracles for the Jewish people in Egypt. Moshe Rabbeinu came to them and said, “We are about to leave Egypt.” And the Jewish people

09:29 The Jewish people accepted this, awakened in faith, and began preparing. Then Rosh Chodesh Nissan arrived, and Moshe told the Jewish people, “This month shall be for you,” and gave them the laws of Pesach. In other words, Pesach is the festival when the Jewish people are only just beginning as a people—the month of spring. The books also discuss the word for spring, aviv. If we look at the word aviv, it contains av and yud-beis. Yud-beis refers to the twelve tribes. Av means alef-beis, and av also means the fathers—the month of the forefathers, the month of Nissan. According to one opinion in the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah, the forefathers were born in Nissan, the month of ziv. Actually, Iyar is called the month of ziv, but they were born in Nissan, as Rashi says in Rosh Hashanah, page 11. So Nissan is connected to the forefathers and to the tribes as well. Av is alef-beis: alef is Avraham Avinu; beis is Yitzchak and Yaakov. Yud-beis is the twelve tribes. The month of spring is the month when the Jewish people were born as a people. Since they had only just been born, they already had faith, but they did not yet have anything to rejoice over. We still did not know what would happen to this people. They were fleeing Egypt, but the Jewish people had still been in the depths of Egypt, immersed in the forty-nine gates of impurity, as we know. That is why the word “joy” does not appear in the Torah. Then came the forty-nine days when the Jewish people counted the Omer. As is known, the Midrash says that the counting of the Omer began during those forty-nine days when the Jewish people left Egypt and made their way to Mount Sinai. Along the way, they had already received several mitzvos—the ten mitzvos they received at Marah. The Jewish people were already beginning to refine themselves, to become more sensitive, and to prepare for receiving the Torah. We already had

11:30 quite a few mitzvos. So on the festival of the giving of the Torah, there can be joy. It is already the beginning of the harvest. There are already mitzvos. They had received the Torah at Sinai, the Ten Commandments, and so the Torah speaks of joy. There is already joy because we have something in hand, just as the grain begins to come in and the harvest season begins. Here, too, there is already a certain harvest. The Jewish people are not only a newly born people with faith; they also have something in hand. They fulfill mitzvos, and those mitzvos bear fruit. As the Gemara says in Sotah, what are the fruits of mitzvos? They are a Jew’s true fruits. But this is only the beginning of joy. Then, during the months from Shavuos to Sukkos—all the summer months—the Jewish people gather more and more mitzvos, more and more good deeds. It is no longer just the start of the harvest; they are already gathering it in. During those months, the Jewish people learned Torah and fulfilled mitzvos. They had accumulated so much. They already have something to gather up and bring home. They have fruit they can bring into the house. They are a people who have developed over these months. So now the joy is complete. The names the Torah gives the festivals also symbolize the state of the Jewish people. To sum up, as we said: Pesach is only spring, only the beginning of the Jewish people’s birth—a people just born, a people just beginning. Shavuos, the Festival of the Harvest, already marks the start of reaping, but only the start. That is why it is only the beginning of joy, one mention of joy. Complete joy comes after we have gathered a wealth of Torah, mitzvos, and all kinds of good deeds. We have something to bring home, something to live on. That is the ingathering. The Festival of the Ingathering is complete joy.

13:34 But here a very simple question arises. Anyone familiar with the history knows that this is not quite accurate. We know that between Shavuos and Sukkos there was a crisis. Things were not as beautiful as they may seem from what we have said. Forty days after Shavuos, on the seventeenth of Tammuz, the terrible sin of the Golden Calf took place. The Jewish people stumbled into a dreadful sin. Then came a long process, a tremendous crisis. Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted to wipe out the Jewish people, G-d forbid. Moshe Rabbeinu had to work hard to obtain Hashem’s forgiveness for us: forty days, and then another forty days. At the outset, the Tablets were shattered. So where is this great joy? On the contrary, between Shavuos and Sukkos, the opposite happened. Trust was broken. There was a grave betrayal in the relationship between the Jewish people and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Yet you say that not only is the joy greater specifically on Sukkos, but that joy is mentioned three times. How can we say that? It is a simple question. But this is where the wonderful, profound message comes in, giving us a deeper understanding of Sukkos. The great joy of Sukkos is the joy of teshuvah. The very problem we raised is the point. As the saying goes, a wise person’s question is half the answer. The question itself helps us understand the depth of Sukkos. Sukkos is not only a festival when we gather in the Torah and mitzvos we received on Shavuos. Sukkos has something special, something more that was not present at the giving of the Torah. This very people, who went through the crisis, who on the seventeenth of Tammuz stumbled into a terrible sin and fell so low—nevertheless, they

15:50 managed to rise from the crisis, to lift themselves up. They were stirred to teshuvah, asked for forgiveness, and heard, “I have forgiven, as you have said.” This whole process that Moshe Rabbeinu went through with the Jewish people shows that despite the fall, the Jewish people not only did not sink into despair; they grew stronger and strengthened their connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It reveals that even when a Jew has fallen very low, he has the ability to rise and awaken his essential bond with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Nothing in the world can break that connection. Therefore, he can return in teshuvah, Hakadosh Boruch Hu accepts us, and the joy is doubled and redoubled. As the Alter Rebbe explains in his maamarim for the month of Tishrei, this is what we have just gone through: Yom Kippur, before it Rosh Hashanah, and before that the month of Elul—the forty days from Rosh Chodesh Elul until Yom Kippur, the forty days of teshuvah. They are forty days in which a Jew shows that nothing, no circumstance, will break my connection. On the contrary, he rises and grows stronger. The Alter Rebbe explains this with a parable about a prince. There is a prince who lives beside his father the king, in the palace. Everything is well and good. Then, at a certain point, the prince distances himself from his father the king. He forgets, and begins to behave in ways that are not so good. He throws off the yoke of Heaven and behaves improperly, until he falls into the hands of an enemy. He is imprisoned. Nevertheless, because he is a prince, nothing can stop him. He remembers his father, the palace, the king’s home, and decides to return home. And when the prince returns from captivity, comes out of prison, and reconnects with his father

18:04 The king—the father’s joy is doubled and redoubled. It is a joy that shows nothing can come between us. And so, precisely when the prince returns to his father the king, the joy is extraordinarily great. This is the joy of Sukkos, which comes specifically after this whole process that began, as we said, on 17 Tammuz. Then Moshe Rabbeinu goes up the mountain, and then he goes up the mountain again. And on Rosh Chodesh Elul, when Moshe Rabbeinu goes up the mountain for a third time to write the second tablets, we begin sounding the shofar. These are the days of teshuvah, the days of mercy and forgiveness. And Yom Kippur arrives. Moshe Rabbeinu comes down with the tablets, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu says, “I have forgiven, as you asked.” So the joy is the greatest joy of all: the joy of the prince returning to his father the king from imprisonment and captivity. Then the son rejoices with his father, and the father rejoices with his son, and together they break into a dance. As explained in Chassidus, the word mechilah—Yom Kippur is called a day of forgiveness and mechilah—is also related to machol, a circle dance. The Baal Shem Tov said that a machol is a special kind of dance. Speaking about the machol, the Baal Shem Tov said: it is a dance in which people stand in a circle, moving closer and farther apart. It is a kind of dance that has long been customary among chassidim: the group moves closer together and then farther apart, closer again and farther apart again. Each time they come close again, the joy rises and grows greater and stronger. The distance is the symbol—the distance that existed between the prince and his father the king. Precisely because of that distance, a much deeper closeness and a deeper connection then emerge. For it becomes clear that a Jew’s bond with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is a bond that, despite a rupture, begins anew and grows even stronger. A person who has always lived—a prince who has always lived in the king’s house, who has always received

20:18 everything good—you cannot know what will happen at a moment of crisis. What will happen if something goes wrong? Will he lose everything? But when the prince returns, and despite everything their bond deepens and becomes stronger, then the joy is complete. And this is really the whole point of our rejoicing on these great days of Sukkos. It becomes clear that a Jew’s bond with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is not only the bond of a tzaddik, the bond of a Jew for whom life is good while he is in the king’s house. There is also the bond of a baal teshuvah, of whom the Gemara says that in the place where a baal teshuvah stands, even a great tzaddik cannot stand. For here the connection is much deeper, much more inward. These are deliberate sins that have become merits, and there is an even greater quality in this than in merits without sins. There is the well-known story of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. Once a Jew wanted to mock him and make fun, so he said to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, “I’m a Jew who has committed every sin in the world. There isn’t a prohibition in the Torah that I haven’t transgressed.” Rabbi Levi Yitzchak looked at him with great affection—as is well known, he was a man of Ahavas Yisroel—and said to him, “I envy you.” The Jew thought Rabbi Levi Yitzchak hadn’t heard him. “What do you mean, you envy me for my sins?” Rabbi Levi Yitzchak said, “Yes.” “What do you mean? Did you want to do all those things too?” Rabbi Levi Yitzchak said to him, “Do you know why I envy you? Because our Sages say that through the power of teshuvah, deliberate sins become merits. With one act of teshuvah, in one leap, in one jump, the moment you do teshuvah, all the deliberate sins you committed throughout your life will become merits. A bond of love, a closeness to Hashem, will be revealed that a tzaddik can never attain. But I have spent my whole

22:12 life gathering merits. Another mitzvah, another mitzvah, another mitzvah. You, in one moment of teshuvah, can turn all your deliberate sins into merits. There’s nothing like it. That’s why I envy you.” And this is what we mean: on Sukkos, there isn’t just one joy, or even two, but three. There is the joy of receiving the Torah—actually, it begins with the Exodus from Egypt. There is the joy of the Exodus from Egypt, of receiving the Torah, and there are the mitzvos the Jewish people have gathered over that time. But there is something more: the threefold joy, the joy of the power of teshuvah. Even if there was a crisis, even if something went wrong, a Jew shows that nothing can separate him from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He is always in a relationship, always connected. On the contrary, he does teshuvah; he comes home. He returns with much greater joy and love. That is why the joy on Sukkos is so great. It is “the season of our rejoicing”: the joy of a Jew with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and the joy of Hakadosh Boruch Hu in a Jew. And so we see that the joy of Sukkos is a joy we don’t see on Sukkos or on... not on Shavuos and not on Pesach. Look at Jewish custom and you’ll see. Although “You shall rejoice on your festival” applies to Pesach, Shavuos, and Sukkos, nevertheless, the custom among Jews in every community is that the joy is greatest specifically on Sukkos. The dancing, the Simchas Beis Hashoeivah. The Gemara in Tractate Sukkah describes how, in the Beis Hamikdash, Simchas Beis Hashoeivah was an extraordinary celebration. Whoever did not see the Simchas Beis Hashoeivah never saw joy in his life. Why? Because here, really, there is joy in every sense. Besides our joy at being the people whom Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose, we have the joy of all the mitzvos a Jew has performed throughout the year. We also have the joy that comes from the power

24:19 of teshuvah. That special joy is the joy of Simchas Beis Hashoeivah. And this also explains another point: what is the connection to Simchas Beis Hashoeivah? We say that Sukkos is “the season of our rejoicing”—the joy of a Jew returning to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, of the prince returning to his father. What does that have to do specifically with Simchas Beis Hashoeivah, with drawing water? It seems curious: where have we ever seen joy coming from water? Usually joy comes with wine. And during the festivals there was indeed a wine libation; wine was brought with the offerings, and “there is no rejoicing except with wine.” The Leviim would sing in the Beis Hamikdash over the wine. But on Sukkos, besides the wine, there was also water, and the great joy came not from the wine but specifically from the water. It is a well-known question. So the Rambam explains: this expresses the point about teshuvah that we mentioned. There is something fascinating and wonderful about the water. After all, where does the water libation come from? What is its story? The Midrash says that when Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world, on the second day He separated the upper waters from the lower waters by means of the firmament, the dividing firmament. Some waters rose above, and others descended below. The Midrash says that the lower waters wept. The waters left below cried, “Why did He leave us down here? We, too, want to be close to the King.” The lower waters wept: “We want to be before the King. Why did He distance us?” Hakadosh Boruch Hu said, “Don’t worry. There will be a water libation with you, and you will be brought onto the altar. That will make things right.” In other words, the water libation comes to repair that separation, that distance created when the lower waters were sent away. Chassidus explains that this is really the idea of teshuvah. The lower waters that weep—what do they represent? They represent the Jew who has grown distant. There are upper waters: that is the tzaddik, a Jew who is up above,

26:45 Torah, mitzvos, and holiness. There is a Jew in this world, the physical world—a soul in a body down here, amid physical pleasures and material pleasures. And then he says: “The lower waters.” And his soul cries out: “I want to come closer. I want to do teshuvah.” The lower waters weep. Sukkos arrives after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We take those waters and offer them on the altar, and from this comes the greatest joy: the joy of a baal teshuvah. That is why the Gemara says that during the dancing of Simchas Beis Hashoeivah, they would say: “Fortunate is one who did not sin; but one who sinned should repent.” And Hakadosh Boruch Hu awaits our teshuvah. He loves our teshuvah, because it is precisely there that a Jew’s true bond with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is revealed. That is the great joy of these days. And from the joy of Sukkos, we draw joy for the entire year. As we said, in these days we have the dancing and joy of Simchas Beis Hashoeivah, the joy of Sukkos, the joy of Shemini Atzeres and Simchas Torah, and the power of that joy. “You shall draw water with joy.” Each and every one of us takes that joy. Even today, though we do not have the Beis Hamikdash, the joy of Simchas Beis Hashoeivah is in our hands: to rejoice as much as possible, to bring joy to our families, to bring joy to the poor, to look for a Jew in the street and bring him the joy of the festival too. “You shall rejoice on your festival,” as it says in the parsha—the poor as well, each and every person. And through this joy, may we merit the joy of a mitzvah, and may we truly reach the great joy we are all waiting for: the joy of the coming of Moshiach, the joy of the Geulah. “Let Israel rejoice in its Maker; let Hashem rejoice in His works.” It is written in the sefarim that the letters of yismach, “rejoice,” are the letters of Moshiach. May the great joy we are all waiting for, the joy of the complete Geulah, come this year, right at the beginning of the year. May this be the year of the true and complete Geulah, when joy will be complete.