We are up to the pasuk of Tapuach Omer. What is the Tapuach? For now I'll say Tapuach is apple, but we'll soon see a very big hiddush.
תַּפּוּחַ אוֹמֵר. כְּתַפּוּחַ בַּעֲצֵי הַיַּעַר כֵּן דּוֹדִי בֵּין הַבָּנִים בְּצִלּוֹ חִמַּדְתִּי וְיָשַׁבְתִּי וּפִרְיוֹ מָתוֹק לְחִכִּי: (שיר השירים ב ג)
Like the Tapuach in the forest, so too is My beloved, amongst the children. I coveted to sit in his shade and his fruit is sweet to my palate.
What are we talking about? Rashi says it's a tree of tapuchim among non-fruit bearing trees in the forest (such as pine trees and the like) And everyone's very happy with this fruit tree that has a good smell and a good taste. That's what my beloved is. Hashem is the most choice of gods and therefore I want to sit in His shade.
Furthermore, the Midrash says, according to Rashi, that the Tapuach tree doesn't have that much shade so people go away from it. So too, everybody else left God at Har Sinai- the goyim didn't want the Torah, and we did. We went under His shade, even though it might not be the most covered of shades.
The Mabit adds that as we said before, even though the Tapuach doesn't have so much shade, we want to sit under it because there's a great smell and we're going to wait for the fruit to ripen and then eat it.
So too, we say to Hashem, even right now we're in Galut and Your shade is not complete, we know that in the future Your shade will be complete; and Your fruit is sweet and it's worth waiting for. We're in this world waiting for Hashem, and we know that our reward will be in the world to come. That's the simple pshat of this pasuk.
But the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat 88A says the Jewish people are compared to a Tapuach in that the fruit comes first and then the leaves, which is out of order. So too, the Jewish people said Na'aseh V'Nishma first we said we will do, then we will hear- so we are like the Tapuach!
But there are a few questions. Firstly, Rabbenu Tam and Tosafot say, That's not the way apple trees work, and says that this Tapuach refers to an Etrog. He cites a pasuk- וְרֵ֥יחַ אַפֵּ֖ךְ כַּתַּפּוּחִֽיםYou smell like the fragrance of Tapuachim which the Targum says is the smell of an Etrog, whose fruit comes before the leaves!
**The timing of this is unplanned and really unbelievable. First our Erev Succot lesson mentioned the Lulav, and now today we are up to the Etrog! How Hashem works that out is beyond me! **
The Tosafot asks a bomb question, if anyone was paying attention, the Tapuach B'Etzeh Hayaar was initially compared to God. So how can we now say that the Jewish people are compared to Etrog tree? The Nefesh HaChaim gives an unbelievable answer. He says that there's a rule that the way Hashem acts is dependent on the way we act down- that here arouses the way God acts. And therefore, he says, since the Jewish people act like the apple tree, Hashem reciprocates and acts that way with us. So if Hashem is the Etrog tree, that means that we, the Jewish people, are also like the Etrog tree. As we know, the Etrog refers to the sadik, and the Arba Minim refer to the four different types of Jewish people. And yet it says that the Arba minim also refer to the four letters of God's name. There's a famous Bet Yosef that brings down the following:
It's not clear in halacha that when you hold the Lulav and Etrog, you have to hold them together. He quotes the story of a great rabbi who had a dream of another rabbi writing on a piece of paper, a yud and a hay and a vav, then left a space and wrote a hay at the other side of the page.
He wondered why that rabbi did that in his dream. The next day was Succot, so he watched the rabbi and saw that he wasn't holding his Lulav and Etrog together. So the rabbi who had the dream explained that the four species correspond to the four letters of God's name, and by separating the Lulav from the Etrog, he was separating three letters of God's name from the fourth. Again, we could say, Make up your mind- do the four minim correspond to God or to the Jewish people? And the answer, again, is both. When the Jewish people act like the four species of the Lulav and Etrog and praise God, God reciprocates with us with the four letters of His name of mercy and brings us all the blessing.
Have a wonderful day.