Things that are
brittle are easy to break. They are inflexible;
therefore, if the environment exerts enough pressure to move it out of its
narrow range of motion, it breaks.
Similarly, in a person, being set in one’s ways is a dangerous
proposition in a variegated environment.
If the environment is no longer suited to that way of being, then a
person ‘breaks’. To become strong requires the ability to adjust and that is one of the central
messages of the Sukkah.
For seven days the Talmud says, ‘get
out from your fixed dwelling and dwell in an impermanent one’. If you do so, you will gain tremendous
strength. It is strength through flexibility. Among the many ideas behind the Sukkah, the idea of impermanence can apply to a person’s
character. Get unstuck from a fixed way
of acting and learn to be impermanent, or in other words, learn to use more than
one way- expand your repertoire.
Mystically, the Sukkah is
related to our forefather Yaakov. He is the
only forefather to have dwelled in the Sukkah.
Why is Yaakov the forefather that is intimately linked to a Sukkah? Because
he represents truth, and truth is an amalgamation of both right and left,
spiritual and physical, love and justice. He is able to
shift according to the correct way to be given the environment. And when someone is able to accomplish that,
he can never break because he is always in resonance with what is happening
around him.
It is an ironic world. From the outside, the Torah seems to be a
rigid cage of iron clad rules. From the inside, the whole goal is the opposite-
to be internally pliable, to free our self from a set way of looking at the world. As an important aside, the process of
Talmudic learning is the ultimate training ground for this goal. It deals with intellectual flexibility, and
learning to see other perspectives. As
we get to Sukkos, we kick our self out of the house and learn to be internally diverse. Things can always change and we need to be ready to change with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment