It says in Parashat
Ha’azinu,
“God wakes up the Jewish people like an eagle wakes up its
nest.
First it hovers above its little
chick, then it spreads its wings, then it takes the chick and carries it on its
wings.”
When an eagle wants to wake up its young, it comes down next to the
nest starts flapping its wings, and it wakes up the chicks. An eagle doesn’t
then carry the chicks in their claws like all other birds (who worry that the eagle
above will take them). The eagle only worries about the hunter below, so it
therefore puts its young on its back. That is how Hashem deals with us.
Hashem wakes us up in several ways; one of which is with the shofar of Rosh Hashanah. As the Rambam says, “Wake up O sleepy ones from your slumber.”
Hashem also wakes us up with
events that happen in history. Twenty years ago, during the week of Parashat
Ha’azinu, I heard this from Rav Matisyahu Salomon- it was the week of 9/11. He
said that sometimes events like 9/11 are there to wake us up. But it’s not
enough to just wake up. We have to wake up, and then we have to make a move. We have to jump on the
back of the eagle’s wings. We have to dive into religion. We have to dive into
Hashem. We have to jump on the back of His wings. We can’t just be awakened and then
fall back to sleep. We have to make a move. Then, when we make that move, “Hashem will direct us alone. Just us and Him. There will be no
other gods or forces.”
That is what will happen in the future. God will direct us as He
did in the past; Like in the years in the desert when there was no other force
able to show any power over us.
Rashi says that that was in the past, and that it
will go on in the future, in the times of Mashiach. We wait for those times
when Hashem will lead us, alone. The midrash says on these words, “Hashem will lead us alone,”
that the Hebrew word for alone
בדד Badad, shows
up in another place, where it says, “How
do we sit alone?”which refers to the time of the destruction
of the Bet HaMikdash. The Jewish people can be alone, either with God, or has v’shalom, without God. Our goal is to be alone with God; with nobody else but God taking care of the Jewish
people.
The He’Emek Davar adds that in the times of
the desert,
when “Hashem led us alone,” and it was clear that there was no other force but God,
He was setting us up for the future, on a path of relying on Hashem
alone.
That is the goal of the high holidays, and that takes us into the
high holiday of Succot. We sit in the Succah, which symbolizes Bitachon. It’s called the Shade of Emunah. We
hide in Hashem’s shade.
We are supposed to be thinking that just as He alone lead us in the desert,
Hashem is leading us alone, in our Succah.
There is a hint to this in Parashat Ha’azinu as well. When God describes the
great things that He did for us, one of
the words that He uses is Yisovevenhu/He surrounded us.
Rashi says that this means ,He surrounded us with the Clouds of Glory, in the desert.
These are the wonderful things that God did for us in the past, and
the wonderful things that He will do for us in the future. But it is our job,
in the present, to realize that, and to be awakened currently, from our nest, and jump on His wings. This is
what we do when we walk into the Succah, and eventually we will be led by Him forever,
in the times of Mashiach.
