Yaakov's Sukkah: The Union Each Person Builds
“Yaakov journeyed to Sukkos and built himself a house, and for his cattle he made booths.” Why does the Torah tell us where Yaakov built his house and his sheds? And what could the Mishnah’s law of a sukkah hollowed out of a haystack teach about a person’s own avodah?
- In Kabbalistic writing, sukkah (סוכה), 60 + 6 + 20 + 5 = 91, has the number of the four-letter Name Havayah (26) joined with the Name Adnus (65), and the joining of these two Names is the union. ↩
Sources here
- Mishnah Sukkah 1:8, which ends “it is not a sukkah.” The reason, “‘You shall make,’ and not from what is already made,” is the Gemara's, Sukkah 12a; the verse is Devarim 16:13. The sefer has “made by others.” ↩
R’ Elimelech reads the verse as Yaakov’s inner life. His main service was always yichudim and deveikus, hinted at in Sukkosah, for the sukkah, as is known, hints at the union on high. He had to think about his house and his wealth, but only with a bare understanding (vayiven read as havanah), not with the main part of his thought; and his true acquisition (mikneihu, his kinyan) for the World to Come was only yichudim and deveikus. Then he turns to the Mishnah: one who hollows out a haystack to make a sukkah has no sukkah. So a great tzaddik who wants to join the whole world, the “heap,” to himself in one union cannot bring it about: “You shall make,” and not what others have made. Each person must work hard on himself to come to the true union.
We must see to our house and our livelihood, but R' Elimelech asks us to give them only a passing understanding and keep our main thought for cleaving to Hashem. No tzaddik can do this work for us: each of us must labor on himself to come to the true union.
Learn this in the merit of Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk. His yahrzeit and life ›
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