Today’s class has been sponsored for a Refuah Shelemah for Sholomo Ben Leila by his family.
Today we have another Bitachon-Sukkah thought. We know that Sukkot is Zman Simchatenu- the time of our happiness. How does that happen? What makes it the time of our happiness?
There’s a beautiful thought in Midrash Shemuel, a commentary on Pirke Avot, regarding the Mishna that say that everyday a heavenly echo comes out from Har Sinai, that says,
אוי להם, Woe to creations, because of the disgrace of Torah.” This means, simply speaking, that people disgrace the Torah, and therefore, they will get into big trouble. But the Midrash Shemuel makes a diyuk/an inference: It doesn’t say that evil will befall those people . It says “Oy/Woe to them. They will groan, like an, “Oy Vey, or “Woe Unto me”
That groan comes from not learning Torah. The Midrash Shemuel points out that it doesn’t say that people that learn Torah have the good life. Many people learn Torah and have challenges and suffer. No one can deny that. But they don’t have the groan, the “Woe,” because since they’re learning Torah, they have the right perspective on life. They understand that this world is temporary; they understand that the things people often get upset about aren’t really that important; they have their priorities, and therefore, the things that might upset other people and cause other people to groan, don’t cause them to groan. They don’t groan about those things.
As the Mishnah continues, “Whoever learns Torah is uplifted.” The things that would bother other people don’t bother them.
One extreme example of this is a story about the Ger Tzeddek of Vilna. He was a Polish prince who converted to Judaism, which was illegal in those times. He was punished by death. The executioner assigned to kill him felt bad about executing this holy man, and asked him, “Will you seek vengeance on me when you go to the next world?”
The Ger Tzeddek answered with a mashal. He said that when he was a young prince, he used to play with the children of the servants. One day he builds a big castle in the sand. One of the servant’s children knocked it down. He told the child that one day when he got older, he’d become a royal and seek vengeance. But when he did get older, he realized it was only a sand castle.
So, he told the executioner that once he gets to the next world, he’ll see that this world is only a sand castle, and it won’t bother him.
There are people in this world that don’t get upset about things. They realize that these things are only sandcastles.
That’s what happens when a person learns and connects with Torah.
The Halachic example of this principle is that fact that a Kohen Gadol is not allowed to contaminate himself through the dead. The Sefer Hinuch explains that this is because the Kohen Gadol is so high and uplifted, that he’s already in the other world. The passing of his relatives doesn’t phase him- not because he doesn’t care about them, but because he’ll be seeing them soon. He knows that the everlasting world is more important that this world. He’s in a different zone.
Of course, this is way over our heads.
So how does it relate to us?
The holiday of Sukkot is the holiday of Aharon HaKohen, the Kohen Gadol. On the first day of the service, his sons passed away. And וידם אהרון- Aharon was quiet. He continued with the Avodat Hashem, and made a tremendous kiddush Hashem/ sanctification of G-d’s name. Aharon HaKohen stayed on the program, regardless of what was going on in his own personal life. That is the power of the Sukkah.
There were three gifts that the Jewish people received, each of which corresponded to a great leader of the desert. Moshe gave us the Mann, Miriam gave us the be’er/wellspring, and Aharon HaKohen gave us the clouds of glory. When we sit in the clouds of glory, we get Aharon HaKohen feelings. We get Aharon HaKohen’s holiness. We are in holy clouds. With that, comes a connection to the upper worlds. That’s what brings us to Zman Simchatenu/Our time of happiness.
If a person has the connection, and they’re connected to G-d, that causes a situation where things that might normally bother or upsetting person, do not bother him. He has something much more important than that. If a person who wins a multi- million-dollar lottery goes out to collect his winnings, and sees a $150 ticket on his car, it wouldn’t phase him, because he’d have greater, and more important things on his mind. The ticket wouldn’t mean anything.
That’s what the Sukkah is supposed to do for us. It’s supposed to lift us up into higher worlds, worlds where there is no Oy or Woe, and that comes from connecting to Torah.
לולי תורתך שעשועי
אז אבדתי בעניי
If not for your Torah, which was my plaything,
I would have been lost in my sorrow.
That’s what David HaMelech said, and that’s been the cry of the Jewish people throughout the generations. If not for the fact that we have the Torah, which has kept us going, we would have long been lost.
This line was said by Rav Shach when he was going through many challenges in his life. There’s a sefer of his Divrei Torah that is named after this pasuk, called לולי תורתך
If not for your Torah, because Rav Shach writes of this concept.