Sukkot

Sukkot, Hashem's Dwelling Place:

The Gra has a very unique explanation of the sukkah in his parush on Yonah in 4:5. The pasuk says"... and he built himself there a sukkah and he sat underneath its shade..." The Gra explains that everything that happens in olam hazeh and all of its richness and goodness come from the sun. This is what it means when it says in Moed Katan (28a) that things in this world depend on mazalot... When the torah tells us to "gather from your threshing floors..." it means to not chase after olam hazeh and to build a sukkah from "the remainder of the threshing floor..." that normally every meal has bread and wine (see Kohelet perek 10) but the torah tells us that we should not get pleasure from them rather just the remainder and we should separate from olam hazeh. We should sit in the shade which is not under the sun, you should make your torah set and your work temporary and this is what it means to have the shade more than the sun shine."

Rav Brevda has an amazing explanation on this piece of Gra that will change the way you see the sukkah. (Not a literal translation) "Schach is the main part of the sukkah, this hints to two things: 1) the type of material, this hints to separation from the pleasures of this world, and 2) the amount of kosher schach which hints to the fact that man must sit and be busy in torah in this world and that it is not enough to simply separate from the pleasures of the world... the talmidim of the Gra explain in Imrei Noam on Brachot (35b) If someone's olam hazeh is temporary then he will have both an olam hazeh and an olam habah but if his olam hazeh is set then he will not have an olam hazeh or an olam habah... It seems to me (Rav Brevda) the the nations of the world wish to sit under the shade of pleasure and enjoy this world, and they do not want the torah, because they do not want to bend their way of life to the way of the torah. But the Jews who are willing to leave the pleasures of this world to get close to Hashem are willing ot go to the desert of place lacking any protection from the sun because we want to be in the shade of Hashem and this is the Torah, to sit in the ananei hakavod (Clouds of Honor) which protects us from the problems of this world and puts us above nature."

Rav Brevda is explaining what the Gra is trying to hint to us through Yonah. The sukkah is our escape from this world, it is our protection from nature. Once we walk in to the sukkah we are no longer controlled by the mazalot rather we are under the shade of Hashem. The sukkah is Hashem's domain and it is where the mazalot have no control. The reason why a sukkah must be 10 tefachim is because just as the gemara explains Hashem does not come within 10 tefachim of the ground. Also it may not be above 20 amot because that is no longer a protection from the mazalot. The zohar seems to says that once we reach that high we are not in this world anymore. This also explains why the Tur requires a kavannah for this mitzvah. His kavannah is that we must remember that Hashem took us out of Mitzriam and protected us with the ananei hakavod. Some poskim say that if we lack this kavannah we have not fulfilled the mitzvah of sukkah. The reason could be because the whole reason why we sit in the sukkah is to remember how we are not like the other nations, pleasures of this life are not our main goals rather we focus mainly of Torah. If we lack this idea we are missing the whole point. The gemara says that on sukkot your house because your temporary dwelling while your sukkah because your set dwelling. This is teaching us to refocus our lives. Normally during the year our main focus is olam hazeh and torah is only a temporary thing. But on sukkot Hashem is telling us that we need to switch it around, the torah must become our set dwelling while we leave olam hazeh behind. This could be the reason why sukkot follows Yom Kippur. Now that we have shown ourselves that it is possible to completely remove the gasmiut from our lives we have time to put it into our daily schedule. We must take the aspects of Yom Kippur and put them into our normal lives.

The Other Nations:

There is a famous gemara in Avodah Zara (3) that in the end of days the other nations will ask for a chance to repent so Hashem will give them the mitzvah of sukkah. After a few minutes Hashem will make the sun make it hot to the point where the people will leave and on their way out kick the sukkah. With the Gra we can get some sort of peshat in this gemara. Hashem is giving the nations a chance to accept Him and His torah and follow the mitzvot. After some time the problems of olam hazeh will become to great for them and they will be so upset that even though they are fully aware of the rewards of the Torah they would give all of that up for the pleasures of this world so they kick the sukkah which basically another way of telling Hashem to keep is torah. There is a famous peshat that says that if it were hot out then Jews would also leave the sukkah. So it is explained that the Jews would not kick the sukkah on the way out. This peshat is telling us the biggest difference between Jews and the other nations. By the other nation they would give up all of the reward of olam haba for a few minutes of pleasure in this world (remember the gemara says it was the end of days, how much more olam hazeh could there be?) to the point were they are disgusted by following the torah. But Jews are different, even though we have gone centuries of pain and destruction in olam hazeh he still keep true to the torah. Even though when it gets hot (there are problems in this world) we will be forced to deal with them all we want to do at the end of the day is go back to our sukkah and be in Hashem's shade.

Have a Good Yom Tov and Shabbat!