“Identity Crisis” Sukkot 5787
Everyone knows why we celebrate Passover. It commemorates the exodus from Egypt. Now ask why we celebrate Sukkot. The answer is clearly written in the Torah [Vayikra 23:43]: “So that your generations should know that I housed the Jewish People in booths (sukkot) when I took them out of Egypt”. When we are sitting outside in our sukkah, we are commemorating the exodus from Egypt. Just like on Passover.
But wait, there’s more. When the Torah discusses the holiday of Passover, it states [Vayikra 23:6]: “On the fifteenth day of this month shall be a Festival of Matzo”. Our Sages in the Midrash comment on the use of the word “this”, and say: “This day requires matzo, but Sukkot does not require matzo. For you might have thought that if Passover, which does not require a sukkah, requires matzo, then Sukkot, which does require a sukkah would all the more so require matzo. That is why the Torah says “this month”. This month requires matzo, but Sukkot does not.” Why would anyone possibly have thought that matzo would be required to be eaten on Sukkot?
Last but not least, Rabbi Jacob ben Asher[1], writing in the Tur [Or HaChaim 625], devotes almost an entire chapter to the origins of Sukkot. He asserts that Sukkot should have fallen in the month of Nissan, like Passover. However, that is the month in which many people – at least those living in the Northern Hemisphere[2] – would be spending time camping outdoors. So to recognize that sitting the sukkah is a Torah-mandated commandment and not just a communion with nature, the holiday was moved to the fall.
It definitely seems that Sukkot and Passover are really one and the same. Both celebrate the exodus from Egypt. But if that is the case, why not bundle the two holidays up into one holiday, where we eat matzo in the sukkah and shake the lulav at the Seder?
The answer lies in understanding that although Passover and Sukkot are both celebrating and even reliving the same event, they are celebrating two very different aspects of that event. The exodus, our redemption from Egypt, took place in two phases. The first phase was the actual release from bondage. After two hundred and ten years of slavery, the Jewish People had developed a slave mentality that became so ingrained in their psyche that redemption was nearly impossible. In fact, our Sages in the Midrash tells us that a full eighty percent of the Jewish slaves died in Egypt during the plague of darkness because they were unwilling or unable to be redeemed. One of the reasons that G-d had to inflict ten plagues on the Egyptians was to give the Jewish People sufficient time to adjust to their new role as “Servants of G-d, and not Servants of Pharaoh[3]”. Passover celebrates the severing of the cord that bound the Jewish People to the Egyptians. It celebrates the leaving of one existence and the entering of another. We eat matzo on Passover to remember the haste in which we left Egypt. We refer to Passover “Our season of freedom (Z’man heruteinu)”. We recite the Hallel prayer to celebrate our new freedom.
The Grand Finale of the exodus was most definitely the splitting of the Reed Sea. The Talmud in Tractate Sotah [2b] teaches that the splitting of the sea is one of the most difficult things that G-d ever did. Why should G-d find this difficult? Rav Zalman Sorotzkin[4] explains by saying that anyone can split water. Just stick your hand in a tub of water, and you can split it, too. The hard part is keeping the water split. And that is where Sukkot comes in. Passover is a “one shot deal” – a quantum leap. Even had another eighty percent of the Jewish People died in the Sinai desert – and indeed a large number did die there – we would still celebrate Passover. Sukkot, on the other hand, celebrates the second phase of our redemption – G-d’s protection of the Jewish People in the desert, day in and day out, for forty years. Passover celebrates the leaving of Egypt. Sukkot celebrates a new existence after leaving Egypt.
This distinction echoes an idea developed by Peter Thiel in his book “Zero to One”. Thiel, a billionaire entrepreneur and investor, asks what genuine progress looks like. He distinguishes between two very different kinds of advancement. Going from “one to n” means taking something that already exists and reproducing it, improving it or spreading it more widely. Going from “zero to one”, by contrast, means bringing something genuinely new into existence. It is not another copy or a better version of the old reality. It is the creation of a new reality. Thiel uses the distinction to describe technological innovation: building the hundredth version of an existing product may be useful, but the decisive leap was made by the person who first transformed an idea into something real.
Passover is our zero-to-one moment. A nation that had existed only as a family and then as a population of slaves becomes, almost overnight, a free people. Before the exodus there was no independent Jewish nation; afterward there was. The ten plagues, the hurried departure and the splitting of the Reed Sea mark a discontinuity in history, a leap from an old existence into an entirely new one. Sukkot begins where that leap ends. It is the movement from “one to n”: taking the breakthrough of freedom and extending it across forty years and into every corner of life. The miracle must be renewed not once but every morning, until freedom ceases to be an event and becomes a way of life. And yet Sukkot sharpens Thiel’s formulation. In business, “one to n” may sound like the less glamorous work of replication. In Jewish history, sustaining a revolution demands no less faith than beginning one. It is one thing to leave Egypt. It is another thing entirely to keep Egypt from returning inside you.
The Talmud in Tractate Sukkah [11b] brings a disagreement on the actual “booths” that housed the Jewish People. Rabbi Eliezer says that the “Sukkot” were the “Clouds of Glory”. Rabbi Akiva says that they were actual huts. Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov[5] explains that both opinions are correct[6]. At first, G-d kept the Jewish People in actual physical huts. But as they grew spiritually in the desert, they could see G-d’s presence and protection even in the Clouds of Glory. This spiritual growth is the point of Sukkot. Everyone could see G-d’s hand at the exodus – “A handmaiden saw at the Reed Sea more than the Prophet Ezekiel saw”. But to continue seeing G-d afterward, during forty years of wandering in the desert, was no small spiritual step. It is this constant hand of G-d that Sukkot commemorates.
It is an old Jewish adage that the deeds of the fathers our signposts for their sons – “Ma’aseh avot siman levanim”. As it was in the first redemption, so it is in ours. In 1948, the State of Israel was created, and after 2000 years, our exiles started returning to our Homeland. Like on Passover, this was a visible and tangible change of affairs. Today, years later, we are still wandering in the desert. Some can no longer see the hand of G-d. They have thrown their ideals by the wayside, and have sown the seeds of “post-Zionism”. But as we stand today, being shot at by our enemies and being pressured by every world leader to give away all that is dear to us, we must remember the message of Sukkot: Whether we acknowledge it or not, G-d is continually protecting us and guiding us. And for this we recite the Hallel prayer.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,
Ari Sacher, Moreshet, 5787
Please daven for a Refu’a Shelema for Rachel bat Malka, Iris bat Chana, Sheindel Devora bat Rina, Esther Sharon bat Chana Raizel, Meir ben Drora, Golan ben Marcelle and Hodayah Emunah bat Shoshana Rachel.
[1] Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, also known as the “Ba’al haTurim” as well as “Yaakov ben haRosh”, lived in Spain at the turn of the 14th century.
[2] The first version of this essay was written when we were living in Australia.
[3] An allusion to the Talmud in Tractate Megillah [14a]
[4] Rabbi Sorotzkin lived in Pinsk, Belarus, and in Israel in the previous century.
[5] Rabbi Avraham Eliyahu Mokotow (Kitov) lived in Poland and Israel in the previous century.
[6] “Elu v’elu divrei E-lokim Chayyim”
