Light from the Future: Sukkos

1. Sukkos – Detachment The requirement of using detached branches to cover the Sukkah is to repudiate the pantheistic conception that equates G-d with nature. While G-d can…
2. Sukkos – Global Warming of the Future Conceptually, each and every Mitzvah enables us to enter into G-d’s Sukkah, i.e., G-d’s abode, one Mitzvah at a time. However, a single Mitzvah gets…
3. Sukkos – Outside in Whatever we experience through the sounding of Shofar on Rosh Hashanah manifests itself during the days of Sukkos. On Rosh Hashanah we ask G-d to be…
4. Sukkos – Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Touching and Eating G-Dly Energy Judaism is simultaneously the least demanding and the most demanding religion. It is the least demanding because even one Mitzvah lasts a lifetime.…
5. Sukkos – Sukkos: The Three Varieties The Sukkah that has three complete walls, but is open on one side—represents the individual who has a solid base— much like the letter chaf that has a…
6. Sukkos – The Eternal Embrace Sukkos is when we celebrate the "victory" we enjoyed on our Day of Judgment. We carry the Lulav (Palm branch) because, our sages tell us, its…
7. Sukkos – The Four External and Internal Lights The Sukkah is the symbol of the future Messianic Age. Its four walls are expressive of four agents that brings us to the period of Redemption. They…
8. Sukkos – The Four Meditations The Midrash connects each of these four species to G-d. The four species are four meditations about G-d. G-d I reveled through nature (Esrog), His…
9. Sukkos – The Perfect Esrog The Esrog tree and its fruit have the same taste. This suggests that the means (the tree) should not be different from the end (the fruit). Much of…
10. Sukkos – The Season of Our Rejoicing Sukkos is the primary Festival of joy. True joy is experienced only when there is a spiritual component to it. Any other form of happiness is more…
11. Sukkos – The Three Names of Sukkos When we leave our comfortable homes and enter the fragile Sukkah that is unprotected from the elements, we demonstrate that the commitments we made on…
12. Sukkos – The Total Holiday Dwelling in the Sukkah is the only Mitzvah that involves the entire person. Even one’s clothing and boots are invited into the Sukkah. Although the…
13. Sukkos – Unity Within Unity In the Messianic Age we will experience two forms of unity in their fullest. We will all enter in one figurative Sukkah in which we are all seen as…
14. Sukkos – We’ll Build This Fourth Wall and We’ve All Paid for It! The Midrash explains that the Torah begins with the letter beis to convey the message that the creation of the world is similar to the beis: it is…
15. Sukkos – Where’s the Table? No nation’s existence seemed to be more precarious than ours. Yet, miraculously, no nation has enjoyed such G-dly protection and shelter. We have this…
16. Sukkos – Yom Kippur and Sukkos: Three Links Both Yom Kippur and Sukkos enable us to “touch” the unknowable. The difference is that the cloud created on Yom Kippur was seen by the High Priest…

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