Jewish Life Digital Edition September 2015 | Page 70

SUKKOT 5776

MITZVAH

THE TALMUD TEACHES1 THAT HASHEM CALLS THE
mitzvah of sukkah: “An easy mitzvah.”
And, if we think about it for just a moment, we’ll see why. After all, it’s not
meant to be an expensive mitzvah: the
walls of the sukkah2 can be made out of
literally anything. Visit Brooklyn, New
York, sometime and you’ll see walls made
from two-litre Coke bottles, cold drink
crates, Lego, you name it. And the walls
can even be pre-existing. In other words,
the walls of the sukkah don’t have to be
built specially for the sukkah. The schach,
the ‘roof’ of the sukkah, is actually meant
to be taken from the leftover husks that
would be found on the threshing room
floor after the harvest, which conveniently occurs at that time of year.
Even more importantly, we don’t have

66 JEWISH LIFE ■ ISSUE 88

Hashem uniquely
tailors His commandments for us to tap into
I BY ROBERT SUSSMAN

to do very much to fulfil the mitzvah of
sukkah!
The Shulchan Aruch, the famous Code
of Jewish Law, authored by Rabbi Yosef
Karo, asks3: “How does one fulfil the
mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah?” And
he answers: “A person eats and drinks;
sleeps and rests; and lives in [the sukkah]
all seven days, both day and night just
like he lives in his home during the rest of
the year.” In other words, Hashem wants
us to do what we normally do each day –
we can even do it in the very same way –
we just need to do it in a different place!
And the amazing thing is that the mitzvah is, in large part, one that’s entirely
dependent on our own choice to fulfil it.
Although sukkos lasts for seven days,
we’re actually only obligated to have one

meal in the sukkah4 – on the first night,
which is why we always hope that it won’t
rain that night and, in the event that it
does rain, it’s why we have to wait until a
break in the rain to at least have a portion
of our meal in the sukkah. Barring the
consumption of certain types and quantities of foods, however, we can actually
avoid being in the sukkah the rest of the
days of sukkos!

C’MON GET HAPPY

I think the mitzvah of sukkah serves as a
perfect example of just how much Hashem loves us and how He expresses that
love by tailoring His mitzvos so they
make the most of things we would be doing anyway; for example, eating, drinking, sleeping, etc. And He even times

PHOTOGRAPH: BIGSTOCKPHOTO.COM

An easy