Rapture After Rupture: Sukkos and the Return of All Hostages
Sukkos is “Zman Simchaseinu/the time of our joy,” and with G-d’s help, we may soon experience an immense joy that we have been awaiting and anticipating for two years now. Nothing is coincidence, the Sages teach us, as G-d conducts His creation with “hashgacha protis/individual divine providence,” which means that everything happens precisely according to His ineffable plan. If the hostages are returned in the coming days of Sukkos, it will reveal the precision of G-d’s workings not only because this is ordained to be a time a great simcha, but also because the very theme of this holiday, according to the mystics, is Reuniting. Indeed it is reunion after painful separation, according to the secrets of the Torah, that is the source of the greatest and most profound joy that one can experience in life.
When the Temple stood in Jerusalem, there was a ceremony that was performed daily throughout the week of Sukkos called “Simchas Beis Hashoevah” in which water was drawn from the Shiloach spring next to the Temple Mount and then poured as an offering on the altar. Regarding this ceremony, the Sages stated that “one who did not see the ‘Simchas Beis Hashoevah’ never saw joy in his days” (Talmud, Sukkah 51a).
What a strange statement. Firstly, what is so incredibly joyous about pouring water on the altar? Secondly, how is it possible to say that one has never seen joy if s/he has not experienced this particular event? Perhaps it would be reasonable to suggest that one has not encountered happiness like this particular happiness, but to claim that without this experience one has never seen joy at all, this is truly baffling. What could the Sages possibly mean?
The Chassidic masters explain that while liquid offerings like wine and oil were offered daily in the Temple, this was the only time of the year that water was brought on the altar. While water seems to be a plain and meager offering, the intense joy of this act hearkens back to the second day of creation when G-d said “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, and let it be a separation between water and water” (Genesis 1:6). Of all the six days of creation, this was the only one on which G-d did not say “and it was good.” This is because separation is not good in and of itself. Separation is painful.
Indeed the Zohar teaches that the waters that were separated on the second day cried out to G-d in agony and protest: “The lower waters cry and say, ‘We too want to stand before the King!’” (Tikkunei Zohar 5, 19:9). Why must we be relegated to the physical world, the lower waters lamented, where we will be far from our Source? Why must we dwell in a realm of concealment and separation, where G-d is unrecognized and where the apparent distinction and individuality of various aspects of the creation engenders conflict and disunity? G-d understood their complaint and sympathized with their plight. But separation was a necessary condition for the creation. Without separation, G-d’s infinite Oneness would preclude the possibility of any independent creation. Separation was therefore a prerequisite for all of the creations that would follow.
It is not only the waters that sense the pain of separation. It is division and distance, the mystics teach, that creates the deepest agony of our existence. Our hearts yearn for connection to one another, and our souls constantly ache from the detachment they feel from their Source in heaven. But there is one time every year when this pain is assuaged. On Yom Kippur, the essence of our soul is revealed and we are able to experience our native and fundamental Oneness. Immediately afterwards, we celebrate Sukkos. It is “zman simchaseinu/the time of our joy” because we can now celebrate the intense ecstasy of reunion after painful separation.
The water libation of “simchas beis hashoevah” demonstrated this motif as the waters which had been relegated to the lower realms on the second day of creation were offered on the altar and thus reunited with the heavenly waters above. The Sages’ statement that “one who did not see the ‘Simchas Beis Hashoevah’ never saw joy in his days” means that one does not know what joy truly is until s/he has experienced rapture after rupture, of spiritual reunion after the anguish of division.
At this time of Sukkos, we pray that this mystic lesson will be tangibly demonstrated for us with the return of all our hostages. May the agony of separation be alleviated for us and for all of G-d’s children, and may we finally know the time of peace and eternal joy that we and the entire creation have anticipated for millennia.
— Pnei Hashem is an introduction to the deepest depths of the human experience based on the esoteric teachings of Torah. www.pneihashem.com
