למה בחב״ד לא מקשטים את הסוכה? (תשפ״ד)

00:00 Speaker 1 Okay, this is Icarus. We are continuing our Between the Holidays series, where we're talking about sukkahs, and we're not going in any particular order. We're not looking at any particular volume of letters. We're finding letters that have to do with the upcoming holiday, and we're looking into them. This is a letter that is in English. We mentioned it in passing yesterday. Today, we're gonna be focusing on it, sort of making it the bedrock of the shiur. This is a letter that was originally in English. It is from Zion, Cheshvan of the year nineteen fifty-four, so quite an early letter, and you have it on your screen. It is here. "Shalom Uvracha. Rabbi Baumgarten conveyed to me your question as to why it is not the custom of Chabad Hasidim to decorate the sukkah, as well as to sleep in the sukkah. The question calls for a lengthier explanation than this letter would permit. However, I trust the following points may suffice." Now, yesterday, we jumped all the way down to the Rebbe's explanation of why we don't sleep in the sukkah, and we talked about that at length. Listen to the prior shiur. Here, the Rebbe talks about decorations and in-- I don't honestly understand why he gives so much introduction. I'm sure the Rebbe has a reason, but it's not one that I have been-- that I have merited to understand. The Rebbe gives a long introduction in this letter. He says that, "Generally, you have to do mitzvahs with Kabbalah's El, with divine

01:00 Speaker 1 authority, not on rational grounds for any reason or explanation you might find in it. One exception is when the significance of the mitzvah is indicated in the Torah, as our sages have connected its fulfillment with it. At any rate, only a qualified person can interpret more fully." So point number one from the Rebbe is we do mitzvahs with Kabbalah's El, and your reasons or explanations for it don't necessarily matter. Number two, we have a rule that a mitzvah should be performed to the best of one's ability, and as Rambam explains at the end of Hilchot Messutim, it should be performed the best way possible. So the second point is Hiddan mitzvah. So we have point one is that you're not supposed to think about the reasons for mitzvahs and, or I guess attach your own reasons for mitzvahs, and you are supposed to think about the real reasons. Don't attach your own subjective reasons to mitzvahs and point number two is that a mitzvah should be done as well as possible. Point three, unlike the schach, the walls of the sukkah and the walls of the sukkah, decorations are not an essential part of the sukkah. They're an adornment which adds to the enjoyment of the person sitting in the sukkah. They're for me. I like looking at a pretty sukkah. They are, as the name clearly indicates, supplementary objects which beautify the external appearance of the sukkah. Now we have three points. Point number one, what I subjectively think doesn't matter. Point number two,

02:02 Speaker 1 I should do my best when doing a mitzvah, and point number three, noay sukkah is about what I want. Now, point number four, where the Rebbe drives it all home, the attitude of Chabad Hasidim in this connection, as taught by generations of Chabad leaders and teachers, is that the sukkah is to imbue us with certain essential lessons. We're supposed to learn something from the sukkah. They're explained in Hasidic literature and the Talmud literature in general. You'll find that somewhere else the Rebbe is not gonna say what it is here, but the sukkah is supposed to imbue us with certain essential lessons. It's expected of Chabad Hasidim that they should be impressed by the essential character of the sukkah without recourse to the artificial makeup, that the frail covering of the sukkah and its bare walls, not adorned by external ornaments, rugs, or hangings, should more forcibly and directly impress upon Jews the lessons it's meant to convey. Basically, we're supposed to be impressed by the sukkah the way it is. The sukkah of the Hasidim is an incredibly holy thing. We're gonna, with God's help, learn a little bit about that today. The sukkah is an incredibly holy thing. When I put my, uh, when I put my, uh, my, my little decorations all over it, my silly little decorations, things that weren't-- or my very nice ones, things that I personally find meaningful, beautiful, ornate decorations, this is, I believe, violating rule number one in the Rebbe's letter, which is that we do mitzvahs

03:03 Speaker 1 with Kabbalah's El, and we don't go looking for subjective reasons in it. I should be impressed by the sukkah the way it is. I shouldn't need to decorate the sukkah in order to feel that it is beautiful. The sukkah is beautiful spiritually. I think that's what the Rebbe's getting at in this letter. In any event, the Rebbe strongly defends the practice that Minchah Chabad is not to decorate the sukkah. I will note as we go over to our source sheet that it's from the Sefer Minhagim Chabad. So in the Sefer Minhagim, it very specifically says that we do not decorate the sukkah. In the Sefer HaMelech HaMassiva, where they, where they, uh, they recorded conversations that happened over meals by the Rebbe, on Sukkos of Tishri Lamed, the first night of Sukkos, somebody asked the Rebbe an interesting question about noay sukkah. He said, "Why does it say explicitly in Sefer Minhagim that we don't do noay sukkah, but it doesn't say specifically in Sefer Minhagim that we don't sleep in the sukkah?" Now, these are two very similar inyanim, so similar that we did back-to-back shiurim on them. The Rebbe has one letter that covers both of them. Nonetheless, Sefer Minhagim very clearly says we do not decorate the sukkah. It's not our minhag and does not say we don't sleep in the sukkah. So a person asked the Rebbe, "Why didn't that make it in the Sefer Minhagim?" The Rebbe's answer, "Negawei noay sukkah shema'at b'Pez, mechavvav kedushas m'Rechem v'Mar, ein minhagenu." "I

04:04 Speaker 1 heard word for word from the Friediker Rebbe's mouth," says the Rebbe, "that we do not decorate the sukkah." So I was comfortable putting that in the Sefer Minhagim. "Mash ein ken n'gawei shina b'sukkah, haya lalan-- haya lashon sh'ad mar amtzaya mar v'ken min shlof in makin b'- min makifin dibina." But when it comes to sleeping in the sukkah, no one ever explicitly said you're not allowed to. The Mitl Rebbe said, "I can't imagine that somebody could sleep in the Makif dibina." We saw that yesterday from the Mitl Rebbe. The Mitl Rebbe says, "I don't understand how someone sleeps, uh, in the presence of the holiness of the sukkah," but it was never explicitly forbidden. Whereas the Friediker Rebbe very specifically says that we don't-- that it's not our minhag to put, to, to put decorations on the sukkah, so the Rebbe was more comfortable putting that in Sefer Minhagim. This is a very strong Chabad minhag, so strong it's in the Sefer Minhagim. Nonetheless, it is a minhag that doesn't make a lot of sense on the surface. We're gonna see that it makes a ton of sense, but on the surface, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Certainly, our kids are all coming home from school with sukkahs generate-- with sukkahs decorations. Even from the Chabad cheder, I have a ton of sukkahs decorations that I'm not sure exactly what to do with now. More on that later. Uh, the Rebbe does actually have a letter about what to do with sukkahs decorations,

05:03 Speaker 1 so hopefully we'll get to that. Um, the reason why everybody's so into sukkahs decorations is because very clearly they used to do it. That's for sure. The, uh, the Tenaim, the Amoraim, the writers of the Mishnah and the Gemara, they definitely decorated their sukkahs. How do I know? It's all over Shas. So the Gemara in Masacheh Shabbos chaf beis amud alef says, "Sikkah kehalchah kehilchasa." Let's say that you covered the sukkah the way you were supposed to. So you put up the schach properly, and then... Hang on, I gotta move this over so I can see. And then And then you covered it with, uh, these colorful curtains and these sheets. And that is then you, uh, you hung, uh, what is this? Nuts and peaches and almonds and pomegranates and, uh, those, those are grape branches. And then wreaths, um, of, uh, of stalks and, uh, maybe of grain, I guess. Then wines and oils and, uh, things full of flower, vessels full of flower. These are the decorations people used to use back then. Let's say somebody did that. You're not allowed to use them until the last day of sukkah, until the next day-- I mean, until sukkah is over. But if you did make a then you're allowed to basically become . But the fact is that the isn't really what I'm going for here. The fact is that the Gemara takes it as a given that somebody might have covered their sukkah with a and then decorated it with all

06:20 Speaker 1 these things that you can find in Evergreen for a low, low price. If you check sukkah, sukkah ten B there's also a discussion of . There was a discussion. You're allowed to, uh... Let's say that, um, you put, uh, your-- It's not-- It doesn't say allowed. So let's say, let's say that you hung sukkah decorations, um, less-- more than , more than, uh, what about eight feet, six to eight feet from the of the sukkah. And back then, their sukkahs decorations were normally these giant tapestries. So it's almost like you're sitting under a... No, it's literally you're sitting under a tapestry, not under the . And you didn't put it close enough to the that it's bottled to it. So what's the din? They say that it's possible because I'm sitting under the noi, I'm not sitting under the sukkah. Anyway, once upon a time, went to the house of the . Excuse me, . Excuse me. It wasn't . would be an enormous size sukkah. I don't know why I said that. So that's what? It's a like what? Th-how many inches is a ? Anybody remember off the top of their head? Whatever. Much smaller measurements. So not . Excuse me. In any event, one time these they went to go visit the . There was no room for them to stay, I guess, in the main sukkah. So Rav Nahman set up a sukkah for them in a, uh, in a-- And the sukkah that they set up for them had noi.

07:36 Speaker 1 It had decorations that were more than four from the roof of the sukkah. They didn't say . They didn't say anything about it. So he said to them, . So the they didn't protest the fact that they were sitting under a sukkah that according to them wasn't kosher because the noi was hanging too low. The decorations were too low, um, relative to the . So then Rav Nahman said back to them, "Have you guys retracted from your earlier ruling that such a sukkah is possible?" And they said, , "No, we're but we're on a special mission. We don't technically have to keep a sukkah, so it's okay that your sukkah's possible." Anyway, these are Halakhic points. Fundamental point is that we have in at least two Gemaras very clear evidence that there was a practice of . The sukkah was, uh, that was the head of the, head of the exiles. The exilarch, I believe, is how you say it in English. In Babel, they had, they had decorations on their sukkah. The six twenty-seven six explains why it's not a problem to sit under these tapestries, to sit under . If I go to a friend's sukkah and he has like a, I don't know, a, a, a blanket hanging and it's, um, right underneath the , am I allowed to sit under it? We hold that you are, and he says, that's not considered a between the person sitting and the because decorations are considered . They are nullified relative to the sukkah

08:50 Speaker 1 itself, relative to the . Why? This is important. Because they are made. Why are decorations there? They're for the needs of the and they cause , they cause, uh, they cause beauty. They beautify the . So we have from Gemaras that there's such a thing as . We have from the that there's a Halakhic implication of the fact that the , that the decorations specifically are there. They help the sukkah. They're for the needs of the sukkah. They beautify the sukkah. There's a lot of reason for us to put us in . Nonetheless, we have a very firm that we don't. So on one hand, we have this very nice idea from the Rebbe's letter that I should care about the bare walls and the bare roof of the sukkah, and I don't need, I don't know, a, a macaroni decoration or those paper, uh, linky things across the top of my sukkah in order to feel that I'm in a beautiful place. Nonetheless, it looks like the and the did and the brings in that it is taught that it is to the and that it is to make it beautiful. So, uh, we're gonna have to look up some reasons. The Rebbe says he can't explain the reasons in this letter. We have to go looking for some reasons why we have the , the strong not to hang decorations in our sukkah. The first reason is one that's basically from . But if you really look back far enough, I think it's

09:56 Speaker 1 more or less a . Uh, the says something that the sort of expresses in . In any event, . Somebody asked the the following question. This is in uh, from the year on page twelve, near the very beginning. They asked, "Was the to make ? Was the to have decorations for the sukkah?" The answered as follows. In Lubavitch, the was not , not to decorate the sukkah. Not under the roof and also not on the walls. I know that there are some Lubavitchers who think that the of not putting up means we don't hang anything, but they'll put, uh, paintings or things on the walls. Even on the walls of the sukkah, it is not our to have, uh, according to the . It sounds also like that from . Also sounds like that from the . It sounds like we don't even decorate our walls. We don't even put posters on the walls. I don't know who he is. Um, I'm sure that I should. I just-- I can't pronounce his name. Anyway, came one time and he had an . That means artificial. He had an artificial, um, uh, collection of grapes, like you can buy at Evergreen. I just saw a giant... They, they have them all over the place in the stores right now, artificial grapes. And he wanted to hang these artificial grapes in the sukkah but they didn't hang them because not the . The, uh, that is the . Uh, uh, the, uh- Yeah. I think yes. He's

11:25 Speaker 1 saying like, uh, here, "By my father, the Rebbe Rashab, it was understood that the people sitting in the sukkah are the noi sukkah, the members, the individuals. Who are the noi sukkah? If your people come to your sukkah," now people who aren't familiar with Lubavitch and our customs, they come to your sukkah and they complain, "Where's all the decorations?" This is a great line to say at the table, "You are my decorations." This is what the Rebbe Rashab said. Rebbe Rashab understood the individuals sitting in the sukkah as being the decorations for the sukkah. The fear of the Kabbalah's oath of the acceptance of the yoke of heaven that we had on Rosh Hashanah. The hard work we did on Erev Yom Kippur, the hard work we did on Yom Kippur, and the simcha, the great joy of sukkah itself were by the Rebbe Rashab, the very, uh, the very p- from-- came from the very pneumus of the nephesh. So the Rebbe Rashab is saying that if you really wanna know what the decoration is for a sukkah, it's the people in it who have been working all throughout Tishrei to have a good Rosh Hashanah and a good Yom Kippur. Now, the reason why I say I think this is is I brought you a Kesub Shemtim as well. This in the Hisafas, in the back of Kesub Shemtim from the Ba'al Shem Tov says, "The Ba'al Shem Tov would regularly say the following, noi sukkah is the simple Kabbalah's Jews who simply

12:37 Speaker 1 accept the yoke of heaven," which sounds to me a lot like what the Rebbe Rashab was saying. The Kabbalah's Rosh Hashanah is what makes a person noi sukkah. They cause an incredible simcha on high with their sim- with their considerable simcha of mitzvah, with the simcha that they take, the joy they take into a mitzvahs and because of their simple faiths. That is when somebody is in your sukkah who has simple faith, who has joy in a mitzvah, who has Kabbalah's who worked hard in Tishrei, who has any of these qualifications, they are the noi sukkah. So reason number one why we don't decorate the sukkah is because we already have the decoration and it's the people sitting in the sukkah. The problem with this answer, although it's a beautiful answer, is that it really doesn't explain why the put up a noi sukkah. They presumably also had Kabbalah's of course. They also had they had Kabbalah's they had good people in their sukkah, and nonetheless, they felt the need for noi, so we're gonna have to go a little bit deeper. The second reason is brought in the Sikha and I wanna draw to your-- I wanna draw, um, draw your attention to this, that the Sikha is found in it's, it's, um, from of Tav Shin Lamed. If that year foun- sounds familiar to you, it's because back here in the the Rebbe was asked about noi sukkah on the first night of sukkah in Tav Shin Lamed and answered it at his

13:51 Speaker 1 table. Something like, what? Six days later, the Rebbe gives the ultimate noi sukkah Sikha. The Sikha goes on forever, Baruch Hashem. It's a very long Sikha. It's a very detailed Sikha that has a whole bunch of discussion, but it is the Rebbe's main body of work on noi sukkah, and it was delivered only a few days after somebody raised the question at the Rebbe's Yom Tov table. I just find that interesting. In any event, this is a of Tav Shin Lamed. We're gonna look at a few pieces of it today. I wish I could-- I wish we could do it all together, uh, but, uh, and I don't even know if we could do the parts that I copied because we just don't have the time for it. It's a long Sikha, but I wanna point out some of the major points. Okay. The major point that he mentions first of all is there is room to say that you don't have to have sukkah's decorations because of the normal reasons that we decorate things. That is, that there's this idea of of course, the mitzvah, the mitzvahs, that you have to make mitzvahs very nice, that you should do mitzvahs in a way of hider. There's an idea in Halakha of Hider Mitzvah. It's not just something that we throw around colloquially. There's a real Halakha of Hider Mitzvah. What exactly does it mean to be and to make a, to make a mitzvah very nice? And the examples that are usually given is,

14:52 Speaker 1 uh, is a the Rebbe brings Tallis which is an interesting thing to bring because as I recall, that's a, that's a Rashi that is somewhat subject to debate. In any event, the Rebbe brings, there's all sorts of things with the of the mitzvah itself. Somebody makes a really nice tefillin. Somebody makes a really nice . Somebody makes a really nice Tallis, really nice tzitzis. That's the the Gemara. Tzitzis, really nice tzitzis. I'm using the mitzvah itself, and I'm making that nice as possible. I have done the mitzvah of . I have done Hider Mitzvah within the mitzvah. However, is there such an idea that I can do Hider by things that are attached to the mitzvah? I find this really interesting because somebody asked me somewhat recently whether an case could be called Hider Mitzvah and whether a nice mezuzah case could be called Hider Mitzvah. And I answered at the time that I don't think it's . The reason why I don't think that it's a kind of Hider is because I think that it doesn't, uh, it doesn't affect the mitzvah itself. It affects something that is a, a side point of the mitzvah, something that the mitzvah doesn't need. Technically speaking, a mezuzah doesn't need a case. Technically speaking, an doesn't need a holder, and I think, or I thought at the time that, uh, that Hider should be concentrated around the mitzvah itself. that the Rebbe says this in the Sikha. The Rebbe says here, the noi, the decorations are not

16:03 Speaker 1 in the object of the mitzvot, which in this case is the sukkah itself. it's adding on side things onto the sukkah. It's a or it's a holder, it's a container, or it's a nice garment and something like that. In Gemara, he brings the Gemara from they would hang all sorts of fruits and things and wheat and stuff around the sukkah in order to make it more pretty. So the Rebbe seems to be saying in this paragraph, just as a general aside in, in Halakha, I'm make-- I'm taking a guess here, but, uh, it, it matches what I thought. So it's a guess plus a guess, and that is, I think that we could say that Hider Mitzvah probably doesn't apply to anything that is a clear for a mitzvah that the mitzvah doesn't need, which means that I think that we-- I think I was right when I said that the mezuzah case and the case are not technically Hider Mitzvah. However, the Rebbe does come back full circle and say, "The truth is you could say that noi sukkah does count as Hider Mitzvah, but only because noi sukkah is an exception to the normal rule, which is that we hold in Halakha, as we saw earlier from the that the noi, the beauty of the sukkah, the decorations of the sukkah, are considered to the . They're considered nullified relative to the that's why you're allowed to sit under it. So it could be the Rebbe says that the only time that you're

17:07 Speaker 1 allowed to, that you're able to fulfill the mitzvah of Hider Mitzvah within something that is not literally part of the mitzvah is when you're dealing with the noi sukkah because that is . I understand that might have been a little bit arcane. I also understand that it was very quick, and I apologize. If you wanna ask me more about it afterwards, I'd love to discuss it. This is something I'm very excited about at the moment because I've been looking for this for a while. Anyway After the halakhic discussion, the Rebbe says that all of that applies halakhically, but let's talk about . Let's talk about a person's feeling. It still doesn't really make sense. So I can explain the Rebbe says that since the , since the decorations are technically halakhically to the , that means they're not really going to, uh, going to be any different from the so it's like I'm beautifying the . Maybe I've fulfilled halacha. At the end of the day though, I know that the grapes that I'm hanging from my is a side point to the itself. So how do I justify doing it? The Rebbe says, "Think to yourself the following." The sukkah itself the walls, the, the . This is-- He, Hashem. This is a mitzvah of God. It's not just a mitzvah, but it has real kedusha. The has and the the walls have . This has real holiness to it. This isn't just an object we use for a mitzvah. This has actual kedusha,

18:24 Speaker 1 The Rebbe says, "Furthermore, it has a special category of kedusha that nothing else in Galus has." The Rebbe says, it says that the sukkah, the holiday of sukkahs is for God. says about this in the Gemara, The Gemara says that the same way Shem Shamaim, God's name, is put on the holiday, so too the-- That might be the . In any event, it's probably the . So too God puts his name on the sukkah itself. So the Gemara tells us God's name is on the sukkah. This means, says the Rebbe, and the Rebbe really runs with this, this is something to know. The Rebbe holds literally that the kedusha that the sukkah has, has the same kind of kedusha that an actual animal sacrifice would have, that an actual would have. That is, the of the sukkah has the same kedusha as a This is the only object you can have outside of during the exile, and at night, that will still have the holiness of a . Nothing else has this sort of exception. We live outside of right now, at least I do, and, uh, and some of our listeners. We have, uh, we-- It's-- We, we time of Galus, uh, it's nighttime on sukkahs, and nonetheless, we have a sukkah that has the status of a . The Rebbe says that is very, very unique. How could it possibly occur to a person to take something lofty like a sukkah, which is literally a , it has such incredible kedusha. It has

19:55 Speaker 1 . It's like an animal sacrifice, the sukkah. And then to decorate it with something that is, that is incidental to it, that's outside of it. What place do decorations have relative to such a mitzvah? This makes no logical sense. He goes on to say, "When somebody is going to make a very nice, that's working with the mitzvah itself." That's what he says in this paragraph. When it comes to sukkah, this is a . The sukkah is already beautiful. It doesn't need your help. It's already in its place. If a person wants to... I'm sorry, that meant not . That's . That is, the sukkah is already built. It's already standing in its place. I come in, so I take this perfectly built sukkah. It's done, it doesn't need my help, and I say that I'm going to come in and make it prettier, not to give it a holy kind of , something that is beautiful to me. so I'll find it beautiful. This is contrary to the entire idea here. The entire idea of sukkahs is . The entire idea of the entire, uh, Tishrei is . And, uh, that I would take such a holy object that's as good as a and take this object and start putting what I think looks nice on the sukkah is just so alien to the idea of sukkahs. This is very much touching on what the Rebbe said he wasn't going to say explicitly in the letter in English. I think this is now fully explained

21:12 Speaker 1 in the It's true, maybe you can justify it, but by the way a person feels, there's no room for such a thing. It doesn't make any logical sense. It doesn't make any feeling sense that I should be able to decorate my sukkah. Based on this, it would make a lot of sense for us to say sukkah decorations are altogether no good. It would make sense to be , to be strict, never to do because it's a bit of a disgrace to the sukkah to insert my personal aesthetics and to impose my personal aesthetic taste on the sukkah. The Rebbe then says, "But the Amoraim did it," right? The Gema- in the Gemara, in the times of the , they were doing it. So I can't say sukkah is itself a problem. What the Rebbe answers in this longish paragraph here that we're not gonna read inside is that if a person truly feels that their s- that their , that their decorations are to the and that they are to the too, then there is certainly room for . That is, that the people who used to sit in the sukkah in the times of the Amoraim, they didn't see the decorations as beautiful. They saw the decorations as essentially nonexistent. They didn't care about the decorations. Because they didn't care about the decorations and all they cared about was the sukkah, it made sense for them to decorate the sukkah because they were only trying to create sukkah, not based on their personal perceptions,

22:25 Speaker 1 but on what the, uh, what the was to make the sukkah look nice. But that it didn't affect their own, uh, because of their incredible , because of their incredible self-nullification, they were, um, they were in a state where they were able to do without inserting their own aesthetic taste onto the sukkah, which is always inappropriate. So the Rebbe says in this paragraph basically is that if you like your sukkah decorations, you're doing it wrong. You d- if you like your sukkah decorations, don't put them up, and if you don't like them, then maybe there's room to put them up. But at the same time, uh, the is obviously very clearly not to put them up. I wanna read this last section, then we're done for now. Um, going all the way to the bottom here. Here we go. Since we already explained that the sukkah has the same kedushah as a carbon even nowadays, which again is just wild. I know the Gemara says in a drash that the Rebbe takes it very seriously. This sukkah has the same kedushah as a carbon. It makes no sense for us to decorate it because it has the kedushah of a carbon. And based on this, we can now understand our custom not to decorate the sukkah. Since the whole idea of no sukkah is dependent on the idea that I will be entirely batel, that it will be entirely batel. If the no sukkah is not truly nullified relative to the Sukkah itself, then we

23:47 Speaker 1 would find that the reason why I'm enjoying sitting in the sukkah is not because of the Sukkah, but-- or not because of the Sukkah alone, but because of the decorations I put up, and that would really be a tragedy. So what the Rebbe says in this final section here, it kind of drives the whole point home, is that if my no sukkah is not a factor at all, then there's room for me to put up my no sukkah. But if my decorations are helping me enjoy the s-- enjoy the mitzvah, then that means that I'm enjoying a piece of pure kedushah, an actual carbon, a literal carbon. The Rebbe says I'm enjoying real kedushah. Why? Because of the fancy tapestries that I put up, because of the fancy paintings I put up, that I'm enjoying this mitzvah because of something that I subjectively foisted onto it. Now, if you go all the way back to this letter in English, look at this point one, where the Rebbe says in point one in this letter. He says, I'm gonna read it again, "Generally, a mitzvah must be observed on its divine authority, not on rational grounds, i.e., for any reason or explanation which we may find in it." So he says here that, uh, a person is not supposed to do mitzvahs because they find it beautiful. A person is supposed to do mitzvahs because they are beautiful. And putting no sukkah up, if you can put no sukkah up without being blinded to the fundamental

24:45 Speaker 1 beauty of the mitzvah, there might be room for it, but the Rebbe doesn't feel we can. So the Minchabad, the strong Minchabad, is not to let anything get in between us and the mitzvah of sukkah. I do wanna make one final note just because a really interesting letter I found. I know we're going a little bit over time, and I apologize. Uh, a final note. I found this in, uh, in, um, one of the books. This is not a published letter yet. It's from the year . So, uh, this is published in the but it hasn't been published yet in Igris. Somebody wrote to the Rebbe, not wrote to the Rebbe. Um, yeah, they wrote to the Rebbe. They gave the Rebbe. gave the Rebbe a painting. It was apparently some sort of an oriental painting, uh, an eastern style painting that had a bunch of Kabbalistic ideas about sukkahs all incorporated. It was a very beautiful painting, and they sent it to the Rebbe to be a sukkah's decoration. So they sent the Rebbe a sukkah's decoration. I guess they didn't know, this is , this is sixteen years after the Sukkah, but I guess they didn't know that the Rebbe doesn't accept or doesn't use sukkah's decorations. The Rebbe writes back, the painting that you sent, sukkah, which was for sukkah's decorations, of choice then. And it's, it, it was, it was received, and thank you very much. I would like to add that you should be very careful to guard its holiness

25:54 Speaker 1 and to totally reject, uh, firmly reject what people normally do with sukkah's decorations after sukkah, spe-- after, after, uh, Chag HaSukkot specifically, where they just throw sukkah's decorations away. If this is noei sukkah, it is holy, and you shouldn't mess with it. Now, of course, the Rebbe didn't hang this in the sukkah. There's just no way. I mean, I, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure. The Rebbe didn't hang this in the sukkah. Nonetheless, the Rebbe wants it to be treated appropriately because it was designated as noei sukkah, and that it shouldn't be thrown away and treated disgracefully. So as a final note, although it is certainly not our minute to put up noei sukkah, the Rebbe seems to have very happily received a gift of noei sukkah that he then didn't hang, and also was very careful not to have it be destroyed and told other people to do that too. So as a final note, um, our kids are coming home from school with, uh, with, uh, with noei sukkah. We might receive noei sukkah, sukkah's decorations from our friends. This does not... From our friends, from, uh, from guests. This does not mean that we should disgrace them, God forbid, or that we shouldn't be happy with sukkah's decorations. It simply means that they don't belong in our sukkah for all of the reasons we've discussed at length. Okay, that's it. Questions, comments, complaints?

26:55 Speaker 2 What happens if you need a noei sukkah for Shalom Bayis?

26:58 Speaker 1 Hmm. Hmm. Ask your Mashpia as with all such questions.

27:04 Speaker 3 You have to elevate yourself to the level where, where, you know, where they don't-- It's not your, your battle, all that stuff that we talk about. You, you know, you have to get there quickly.

27:15 Speaker 4 It also ties into another topic we've had about, uh, about priorities, or .

27:23 Speaker 2 Right. We spoke about that, uh, last week, about, uh, allowing the woman to make decisions and only certain things do you get in the way.

27:39 Speaker 1 That's right. And, uh, we have to be, we have to be selective about those. Uh, these sorts of questions, something we've talked about at length and that I cannot, I cannot hit hard enough is that, uh, anybody who is doing this Hasid thing, uh, without a Mashpia is operating at such a small fraction of their potential capacity. And these are, these are Mashpia questions. Uh, these are specifically questions for a Mashpia, is exactly where to balance these sorts of things with things like Shalom Bayis, with things like your own sense of and your own hidder and your own enjoyment of the holiday. Wi-without, without a Mashpia who can answer these questions for you, you're, you're, you're missing, you're missing half the experience, maybe, maybe three-fourths. But yeah, these are, uh, these are specific questions for specific families. But, uh, now you at least you understand the union. When I think this is most important, especially with the sleeping in the sukkah, with the decorating the sukkah, is in sukkahs in a lot of places is but against the Halakhah. It looks like that. We're also gonna talk with God's help about si- about sitting in the sukkah in the rain. A lot of our sukkahs look like they're and what the Rebbe is doing in each of these sukkahs and letters is he's demonstrating not only are they not against Halakhah, they are a hidder. I think I mentioned this to some of you. I had some bachurim over for... What did they come for?

28:45 Speaker 1 They came to farbrengen for something. No, they came for dinner. Dinner second night Rosh Hashanah, and, uh, one of them mentioned some of these in Yanom and Sukkah and said, "Well, you know, we're lenient. We don't sleep in the sukkah." And I said to him, "You don't understand Chabad. We're never lenient. If we're not doing something, it's because we're being very, very strict." And that is the case, is that we'll find that we, uh, we do not have kulahs, uh, never. I don't think we have a single leniency on Lubavitch. Some of the things we do that look like kulahs or look like end up being incredible chumrahs.