למה בחב״ד לא ישנים בסוכה? (תשפ״ד)

00:01 This is Igres, and today we are going to talk about sleeping in the sukkah. What we're doing now until the end of sukkahs, until the end of Tishrei really or the middle to end of Tishrei, is we're just going through letters from anywhere because we haven't decided on our new volume yet. That's something we're going to decide on Im Yirtze Hashem by Simchat Torah. So, uh, for these next few days between now and sukkahs, we're gonna go through some of the Rebbe's classic sukkahs letters, classic Sukkos Inyanim, and one of the ones, the one that I wanna start off with is maybe the most famous, certainly one of the most famous, and that is the sleeping in the sukkah controversy. If you-- It's not a controversy if you're from Chabad and never left, but if you've ever been anywhere else, you know it's a controversy. Among Frum people, sleeping in the sukkah, especially in areas where it is comfortable, is something that people are medakdek in mitzvahs. People who are careful about mitzvahs generally are mehadrin to sleep in a sukkah unless they're in a dangerous place or a freezing cold place. So it's very odd that in Lubavitch, where we are very careful about mitzvahs, very, very careful about mitzvahs, we're always the medakdekim, for s-- for whatever reason we are, uh, for whatever reason we're gonna learn today, but for seemingly confusing reasons, we are not as careful to sleep in a sukkah. The big question around it is that we are absolutely

01:04 crazy about sukkah, generally speaking. We eat in a sukkah even very small amounts that halakha doesn't require us to. We, uh, eat in the sukkah even when it's pouring rain, and yet when it comes to sleep, we don't do it. So many people brought this question to the Rebbe, some in good faith and some in less good faith. You can tell by whether they brought this question to the Rebbe in good faith or not based on the Rebbe's response. There's a very famous video that Parrots reminded me of. I don't have it for this year. Maybe somebody will post it in the group, where the Rebbe becomes, uh, visibly upset at somebody who comes to Dollars, I believe it was Dollars, uh, asking this question in a way that was clearly trying to, uh, rile up-- clear-clearly trying to start trouble and create divisions between Yidden and not to ask an honest question. So some people ask this question in a less honest way as a way of attacking Lubavitch, "Why are you not sleeping in the sukkah?" And some people ask it in an honest way, and you can see the Rebbe answers them differently depending on how they asked. This letter I have on the screen is from the year, uh, Tes Shin Tes Vav. The volume is eleven and the letter is Gimel Tes Shin Tzadik Vav. And here you have somebody who I suspect was asking the question in bad faith because the Rebbe gives him a pretty harsh answer. So

02:04 here's the letter. The Rebbe says, "Shalom Uvracham. Okay. So these questions are asked. You should note that it says the Rebbe that there are a lot of places where we don't do exactly what Shulchan Aruch says, and there are stronger questions than sleeping in the sukkah, where at least there's a heter. By Chanukah, lchayeh, there's no heter for what we do, and you'd have to look into why we do that. The Rebbe says, "I'm shocked that you only wrote me questions in this letter." You didn't tell me about your learning. And furthermore, a bracha for a, uh, for a good writing and sealing, uh, in the name. It says here Beshem Kav HaKadosh Ad Mashlitza. I don't know why it says Beshem. Maybe it was written by the maskir and it's not his exact words. I think we can trust that the Rebbe, though, edits all of his letters and looks through them. This is the Rebbe's exact words. Um, so, uh, we don't have an answer here. We have somebody writing to the Rebbe saying, uh, "Why don't you sit and sleep in the sukkah?" The Rebbe is saying, "Look, there's two reasons in Shulchan Aruch, mitzvahs, spot them in a sukkah, and there could be a dove-a dove bazeh." And, uh, and essentially, uh, the Rebbe poking at him for, uh, for, for, for asking this sort of question. Uh, that's why I say it's in a lot of these cases, you can tell somebody asked in bad faith, so you can see

06:14 that the Rebbe answered in a, uh, in a harsher way than when people ask in good faith. We're gonna see a letter in a second where someone asks an honest question to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe gives them an honest answer. Not that the last letter wasn't honest, but you know what I mean. This doesn't seem to wanna load right now. Here we go I do wanna note before we go any further that, uh, that the Misnagdim did not invent sleeping in the sukkah. It is, uh, it's in Shulchan Aruch. The Alter Rebbe brings in Shulchan Aruch Harav, so it is even the Alter Rebbe's... I don't know. I don't wanna say minhag 'cause we don't know exactly what he did. The Alter Rebbe brings in Shulchan Aruch in his Shulchan Aruch that you have to sleep in the sukkah. Yeah, and this is from a Rama. Uh, what is the mitzvah of sitting in the sukkah? What's the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah? He lists, that is eating and drinking and sleeping, and is literally means to like walk, but I think here it means to sort of relax. and to live all seven days in the sukkah. day or night just like you do in your house. So the Alter Rebbe brings it as one of the mitzvahs of sukkah. By the way, the Rebbe has a sicha, we're gonna look at a piece of it later, where he tries to use a ragot however, who holds that maybe sleeping in the

07:15 sukkah is not ikar mitzvah sukkah, but the Rebbe points out that based on the lashon in the Shulchan Aruch Harav here, we see that it is ikar mitzvah sukkah to sleep in the sukkah. That's what the Ra- Alter Rebbe says here. So this is an ikar part of the mitzvah of sukkah. you can eat, you can have snacks outside of the sukkah. But you can't even take a nap outside the sukkah. So in some ways, sleeping is stricter than eating. You're allowed to have a cracker outside the sukkah. We're strict, but you're allowed to. The Alter Rebbe does not allow you to sleep, even a snooze, even a little sleep, even a little rest outside the sukkah. Because there really is no difference between a nap and a full night's sleep. Sometimes a person only dozes off a little, and that's already enough. So it's not, it's not clear when you go to sleep how much sleep you're gonna need. Maybe you'll take a power nap. This, so this is a sh- th- that's a footnote thing there. Just let me get rid of that. Okay. When it comes to cold places, this hester is from the Rama, and it's in Shulchan Aruch Harav. If you're in a cold place, it would cause you pain to sleep in the sukkah, because it's very cold, you don't have, uh, you don't have pillows, you don't have blankets, you don't have to sleep in the sukkah if you're gonna be cold and uncomfortable. Let's say you have

08:28 pillows, you have cushions, but you can't find a place for them in the sukkah . You're not gonna set up beds there the whole time. They didn't have those fancy rollaway beds back then. You would have to take the beds out when you wanna eat and put them back in when you wanna sleep. That's very difficult to keep on rearranging your sukkah furniture. Even somebody who's in a not because it's cold, but because they're annoyed by the fact that they have to make their bed in the sukkah all the time. Even such a person, to a degree that had, if you had that sort of frustration in your house, you wouldn't sleep in your house, So any anything that makes a person suffer, they don't have to do in the sukkah, and this is not just that they're too cold. This could even be that it would be deeply inconvenient, uh, inconvenient enough that it would annoy them about sleeping in their house. Uh, if they have to move their beds around and move the furniture around in the sukkah, that's enough to from the sukkah. So as the Rebbe said in the letter, there is a well-known hester, and this is from the Rama. However, the Rama and also the Alter Rebbe say this, the truth is that the world is very lenient about sleeping, because only people who are very careful about mitzvahs sleep in the sukkah nowadays. Now, what are Hasidim? We're careful about mitzvahs. We would assume we would be in

09:39 this category. The, uh, Rebbe also says in that sicha I mentioned a little bit earlier that, uh, that we're-- That when it comes to eating, we don't care about right? It can be pouring on us. We go, "No, I'm not ." See, just what-- This probably isn't our hester, but it is noteworthy that there is a hester, and it probably isn't ours. Despite the fact that the Shulchan Aruch is telling us here that it is definitely the, um, most praiseworthy custom to sleep in the sukkah, we find that our Rebbeim are machad not to sleep in the sukkah. This is, uh, from Sefer HaSichot of the Friediker Rebbe. The year is taf shin hei, just a small near the end, where he says that the Rebbe Rashab farbrenged very much in the sukkah. And that's on that particular Sukkos of the year that he was talking about. He farbrenged a lot. Uh, even though he had a big court case the following day in Rudnia, nonetheless, I don't know the story there. Nonetheless, at night, he, uh, he, uh, continued to farbreng for a very long time. Says here that the Rebbe Rashab The Rebbe Rashab did not sleep in the sukkah. He wouldn't sleep in a sukkah, but he was happy to sit in the sukkah the entire night and not sleep. So the, so he says here the Rebbe Rashab, and he's gonna say this in a couple other places too, the Rebbe Rashab's minhag apparently was not to sleep during Sukkos very

10:51 much at all, and certainly not the first night of Sukkos. We have here a longer version of this, where he expands upon it, a really fun sicha from the Friediker Rebbe, which quotes a Mitler Rebbe that becomes sort of the root of our custom not to sleep in the sukkah. So here's where our custom comes from. Rebbe Hendel, he didn't sleep in the sukkah. He explains He was a His father, I'm never gonna pronounce it. He was somebody who studied He was one of the people who studied by the Mitler Rebbe. In the times of the Alter Rebbe, the Mitler Rebbe was in charge for a certain period of time of educating the younger men who came in the time of the Alter Rebbe. So this was his, his father, Rav Gershon, was a Talmud of the Mitler Rebbe. He says One time it was told to the Mitler Rebbe, One time people told the Mitler Rebbe that there were young men who were sleeping in the sukkah. The Mitler Rebbe gave them a real He really, uh, really hit them over the head. He said, A person can sleep in a ? This is in shock. learning in . Certainly, I, I guess we'll allow the fact that people learn in a . We're going to have to allow it. It's difficult, and we allow. But to sleep in a ? Now, the is this idea that there's a very high levels that exist during Sukkos. That's all we need for now. We're not

12:19 gonna do the Kabbalah today. Maybe another time. Um, but there's a big There's a very important Kabbalistic thing going on in the sukkah, and the Mitler Rebbe says, "How can people sleep in a sukkah?" How can a person sleep in a ? Now it says here in the fabricant that the people who are listening to the free that could have aren't sure if this part is still the mid that have been talking or now just the free that could have been talking. But in any case a person is always suspected of causing damage. Uh, where is this? They don't know if it comes from the mid that have. Here we go. When a person is already awake, he has his life force and he's awake. he can at least control himself when he's awake. when a person's asleep he only has a small amount of his life inside him. He's not a Baal Ba'alas over himself. He can't control himself anymore. Therefore, when the Avrechem would enter the sukkah, they would be afraid of the Makas. There was a certain year, a healthy fear of the Makas such that they were not sleeping. So, uh, somebody told the Rebbe that people were sleeping in the sukkah. He was very upset to hear this, that they, they shouldn't be sleeping in the sukkah. Uh, this is the Rebbe Rashab. The Rebbe Rashab did not sleep at all the first night of Sukkos. He would sit in the sukkah the entire night. He would learn. would learn

13:36 Chassidus. Regarding sleep, the question didn't even arise. It wasn't even a question whether he would sleep. Some things need explanations. Some things only need a hesber. A bir and a hesber are a little different. Things that are done as a simple thing, just the way things are, never really need to be fully explained. They're just carved in the soul. This idea that the Rebbe Rashab did not sleep at all the first night of Sukkos . People in general didn't know about this. People knew that he was awake . This was generally not known that the Rebbe Rashab didn't sleep, but if you were around, it became carved into your soul, and it never really required an explanation. Okay, so what do we have from this? We have that the Midla Rebbe not only says that it's not a good idea to sleep in the sukkah, or that maybe it's a minhag of Chassidim to feel the Makas enough that they don't sleep. The Midla Rebbe gives a chelek to people who sleep in the sukkah. He's very upset about it. Says he can-- i-it's, it's already it's it's already difficult that a person could learn in front of the Makas or function in front of the Makas and not be absolutely mensch. But the fact that a person could sleep in a sukkah is something that the Midla Rebbe finds... I, I don't wanna, I don't wanna use too strong language, but it almost sounds like he finds it repulsive, that somebody could sleep in

14:44 the sukkah is, is, uh, is, is, uh, is bothersome, is How can a person sleep in the Makas? The, uh, issue of course is that in Shulchan Aruch it says that you're supposed to sleep in the sukkah, right? That's-- So we do have a, we do have a bit of a problem here, which is that on one hand, al pi Shulchan Aruch, there's an inyan to sleep in the sukkah, and on the other hand, not an inyan, it's a halach, and on the other hand, al pi Chassidus, it looks like it's the worst thing in the world to sleep in the sukkah. I did bring you a Gemara. I don't know exactly where to put it in the shiur, so I'm just gonna slide it in right now 'cause it's interesting. The, the, to the idea that the Re-- that the Rebbe Rashab didn't sleep on Sukkos, this actually is something that shows up in Shas, that it sounds like from the Gemara that, uh, in the times of the Gemara, they didn't sleep on Sukkos. I just wanna read you this Gemara. It's in Masechet Sukkah fifty-three A. Tanya, Amuda Yeshua Ben Chananya. He says, When we would celebrate the our eyes didn't see sleep. How'd that happen? Why didn't they sleep? Early in the morning, they would come to see the the first offering. From there, they would go to davening. Then they would go see the Then they had to daven Musaf. Then they would go to the Beis Midrash to learn

15:46 Torah. Then they had to go eat and drink because it's a holiday. Then they had to go to Mincha. Then they had to go to watch the Tamid of the afternoon. And then they would go to the and they would do that all the way until the following morning. So they just didn't sleep. The Gemara then asks, uh, a question, "Isn't it true that somebody makes a vow that they're not gonna sleep for three days? It doesn't count because, um, or we get rid of it because a person can't do that and stay healthy. They'll die." And the answer given in the Gemara, It means that they would rest on each other's shoulders and take little naps, but they didn't sleep. So the idea of the Rebbe Rashab, they didn't sleep on Sukkos, is not really out of left field. Uh, anyway, we do have a standing question here, which is why we don't sleep in the sukkah given that Shulchan Aruch says to, and given that the Midla Rebbe feels very strongly that we shouldn't. So somebody did write a letter to the Rebbe that clearly was coming from a better place than the prior letter because the Rebbe is not upset by this letter at all. The Rebbe gives him honest answers to honest questions. Ask the Rebbe an honest question, you get an honest answer. This has two answers in it. One of them I think we're gonna work on tomorrow, b'li neder. I'm hoping to do sukkah decorations tomorrow, so we're

16:46 gonna jump to the bottom of the letter. But in any case, this letter is an English letter, originally in English. In, uh, in they, uh, they said it's-- they, they brought a translation into Hebrew from English, but who needs that? We'll read it in the original. Says, uh, "This is from the seventh of Cheshvan of the year nineteen fifty-four. The Rebbe Shlomo Bracha, Rabbi Baumgarten, conveyed to me your question as to why it is not the custom of Chabad Hasidim to decorate the sukkah or to sleep in the sukkah. The question calls for an a-- lengthier explanation than this letter would permit. However, I trust the following points may suffice." We're gonna skip decorations for now and go down to sleeping in the sukkah. Here the Rebbe gives an answer. "In order to safeguard and inspire a greater feeling of sanctity toward the sukkah, sleeping in it is not practiced by us." Okay, it's to keep the sanctity of the sukkah. The basis for this is twofold. Two reasons. First, we have a rule that First of all, somebody who is suffering does not have to be in the sukkah. Secondly, during sleep, a person is not in control of himself, and furthermore, the very act of dressing and undressing, et cetera, inevitably creates a commonplace attitude toward the place which serves as a bedroom. So there's a bizayon in the sukkah when a person dresses, undresses, treats it like a bedroom. Such a depreciation of attitude toward the sukkah by sleeping in it as

17:46 explained above, from what his attitude should properly be toward the mitzvah of God whereby He has sanctified all Jews, would be deeply felt by the Chabad Hasidim by virtue of his Hasidic teachings and upbringings, and would cause him profound spiritual suffering. The combination of these two considerations therefore led to the custom not to sleep in the sukkah. So the Rebbe is combining two things. First of all, we add in Shulchan Aruch, somebody who suffers doesn't have to sleep in the sukkah. I said to you, the Rebbe also says it's in a Sukkah. Doesn't sound like us. We don't care about Mitzvah. But when you add Mitzvah to the fact that there could be a spiritual suffering, and when you add that to the fact that there is a, uh, a potential bizayon in sleeping in the sukkah, when you combine all these factors, uh, and the person can't control themselves while they're asleep, that was mentioned by the free that could have, it sounds like from the Rebbe's letter, we're combining a bunch of different factors that all make it a bad idea to sleep in the sukkah. But look at this. However, if a Jew feels absolutely certain that his sleeping in the sukkah would not in the slightest affect his attitude towards, toward the sanctity of the sukkah, and is consequently free from any mental pain that might be caused thereby, he is duty-bound to sleep in it in accordance with the fullest meaning of Teshuva kein taduru, to make a sukkah dwelling

18:41 place to the utmost. Now, that is very strange. I haven't heard this before. Have, have you heard this before? Anybody else heard this before? The Rebbe here says that if you're sure that you're not going to be pained by sleeping in the sukkah, you're sure you're not gonna have any mental or spiritual anguish, and you're sure you can keep the sukkah a holy place, you are not just allowed, but to sleep in it. Now, I don't know how to match that up with what the Midra Rebbe said. The Midra Rebbe said that he heard that Avraham in his time, who presumably were careful people, uh, that they, they were sleeping in the sukkah, and he's very surprised. He gives him a he says. He gives him a, a real, real . He says, . He's very surprised. The Rebbe here says, "Uh, if you can do it without feeling it, then go for it. Just, you know, make sure you're not ." There's a lot more wiggle room here, something that you don't normally see. I have a possible solution to this, which comes from the end of this and with that, we'll conclude for today. The Rebbe has a very famous long where he explains at length the not to sleep in a sukkah. A lot of what I've been telling you is actually taking bits and pieces from this . I'm not bringing the whole here. You can look it up obviously in . I'm bringing just the very end. At the very

19:40 end of the the Rebbe says, "I've explained thoroughly." The Rebbe says, "Look, as he explains in his letter, as he explains earlier on in the , the reason why we don't sleep in the sukkah, the reason why don't sleep in the sukkah is because there's a going on in the sukkah. It's a very holy place. It would cause them pain to be asleep in front of it. It would, uh, that, that pain would cause them to be from the sukkah, so they don't sleep." Also, the Rebbe says, "Possibly they don't sleep because they can't sleep. If a person literally can't fall asleep in the sukkah, they're from sukkah, and a person who under-- who's tapped into the won't be able to sleep. Even if they are able to sleep, they'll be pained that they did sleep." The Rebbe answers why . A very holy people sense the sukkah, and therefore halakhically are not supposed to be sleeping in the sukkah 'cause they are because they're suffering. But then the Rebbe says, "What about us? What about, what about everybody else? What about people who, uh, who don't feel the ?" We see by the way that most people act in the sukkah, even people who are not yet, and notice he says yet, not yet able to feel the of the sukkah, they don't sleep in the sukkah. Even though when it comes to eating and drinking, they are very careful. So this is sort of speaking to the end of this English letter. We

20:57 said, uh, the Rebbe said here that if you truly don't feel the you should be sleeping in the sukkah. And here the Rebbe says, seems that the is that even if people don't feel the you can tell by the way they act in the sukkah, that even if people don't feel the they still shouldn't be sleeping in the sukkah, and the Rebbe now explains this. I'm going to explain this now, says the Rebbe, why we don't sleep in the sukkah. Why don't sleep in the sukkah? 'Cause there's a that bothers them. It either would bother them if they fell asleep during it, or it bothers them so much that they can't fall asleep because it's there. Why don't we sleep in the sukkah? We are . We're connected to our Rebbe. We learn their Torah so that we can do it. We follow in their path. We follow our Rebbe's . As it says in the Gemara, we're gonna skip this part right now for a second and go to here. When it comes to us specifically, when there is a and there's a that a per-- that a Rebbe can do and that I can't necessarily do, this cause me incred-- this causes me incredible . So basically, not being able to keep my Rebbe's not being able to connect to my Rebbe by doing the thing that my Rebbe is doing, whenever I see that I'm not capable, that I'm not at the level to act like my Rebbe, that causes incredible pain

22:15 to me because I'm a . I'd like to be like my Rebbe. And at that moment, . So if a were to sleep in the sukkah, they would n-- it's not that they... And, I mean, hopefully many The Rebbe says a here, so it seems like people can, uh, normal people can reach the level of sensing the in the sukkah. But let's say you don't sense the in the sukkah, then why shouldn't you sleep in the sukkah? Because you're connected to the Rebbe, and because the moment you fell asleep, you would say, "Oi, what kind of a person am I that I can sleep in a sukkah and my Rebbe can't? I'm so low in that level, so distant from my Rebbe," lack of and that, that pain of a lack of would cause the Even more so when it comes to our thing. The Mitneder Rebbe demanded this from the, uh, the in the that we saw. Since the Mitneder Rebbe demands that a person be bothered by the enough that they can't sleep in it, with question mark, exclamation point. The Mitneder Rebbe demands this. The Rebbe demands this. Therefore, a to our Rebbe could not possibly sleep restfully in a sukkah because he'd be bothered the whole time that he's not feeling what his Rebbe told him he's supposed to be feeling. It's true that the light of the sukkah itself isn't bothering him from sleeping, but he's bothered by the very situation. He's upset that he's not at the level that

23:38 he knows not to sleep in the sukkah. And even someone who's not upset about that, excuse me. Even somebody who's not upset about the fact that they don't feel the light of the sukkah he's still upset He's upset that what the Mitneder Rebbe said doesn't really have an effect on him. He's upset that he snorts when he hears the Mitneder Rebbe's statement. You know, the Mitneder Rebbe says, "How could anybody sleep in the sukkah? The there." And the average person goes, "I don't feel a ." That should upset them just as much, and that's also that would make them from the sukkah. As an outcome of this, this means that any sleeping in the sukkah would cause him pain. Is it possible really? How could it be that he's able to sleep in a sukkah without it bothering him? And that is the So if we had to summarize everything we've done right now, I know we don't have any time left, it's one o'clock already, but let me just summarize very quickly. We saw a letter that somebody wrote, I believe a little bit insincerely to the Rebbe, based on the Rebbe's answer, saying, "Why don't sleep in the sukkah?" And to such a person, the Rebbe said, "There's already I don't know why you're bothered by this and not by other things. Maybe you should be careful about how you write your letters in Elul." However, the question was a good question to ask them. It wasn't asked in the right way, but

24:46 it's a good question to ask them 'cause the very clearly say that you're supposed to sleep in the sukkah. And while there are uh, that say that you don't have to sleep in the sukkah if it's gonna rain on you or if it's gonna be cold, we generally speaking are Now, generally speaking, always when we're careful about mitzvahs, you would think we would sleep in the sukkah. We saw a two of them, and the, the most important one for our summary at least is this one that includes the Mitneder Rebbe, where people came to the Mitneder Rebbe and told him people were sleeping in the sukkah, and the Mitneder Rebbe was actively upset about it and said, "I can't believe that somebody could sleep in the makif." We explained why a person doesn't sleep in the sukkah because there's a makif there. We had a letter from the Rebbe in English. We had a note here that if you're certain that sleeping in the sukkah won't cause you any pain, you can sleep in the sukkah. But the other thing that we said from our Sifra, which is so important, is that a Hasid will feel pain from sleeping in the sukkah. Either a Hasid will feel pain from sleeping in the sukkah because they will sense the or makif, which the Rebbe says is totally possible for normal Hasidim, that they will raise themselves to the level that they'll sense the holiness of the sukkah, and that they, like the Rebbe, will be unable

25:41 to sleep because they'll be sleeping in front of the makif, and that would cause a tzar. Or a Hasid should not sleep in the sukkah because a Hasid should feel pain that they are not feeling the or makif, and that pain would be most expressed the moment they fell asleep. How did I fall asleep? How did I not buy into the inyan of the Mit LeRebbe? So for any of these reasons, we are still fundamentally based on Shulchan Aruch, based on Shulchan Aruch, fundamentally in line with Shulchan Aruch. The Shulchan Aruch says, "Mitztayah patim min haSukka." And absolutely a Hasid who sleeps in the sukkah is mitztayah, either because they're feeling the makif or because they're not feeling the makif. Uh, in this letter from the Rebbe in English where the Rebbe says that some people should sleep in the sukkah, that would have to be somebody who is also-- doesn't have the Askshas problem, right? They're not feeling the or of the sukkah, and they also don't feel like they're missing anything. Such a person is in a very, very sorry state. Uh, I don't believe it applies to any of us. Okay, that's it. Questions, comments?