A Roof that Lets Heaven In: What Distinguishes Us

It is incredibly difficult to write a blog about the festival of Sukkot and Hoshana Rabbah, simply because I find myself overwhelmed by the sheer depth of ideas surrounding this chag. Sukkot is a wellspring of meaning — from the mitzvah of ישיבה בסוכה, to the joy of ושמחת בחגך, to the fact that it is the time when נידונין על המים — we are judged for rain (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:2).

Our sages teach that the mitzvah of Sukkot and this judgment comes בזכות אברהם אבינו, in whose merit the clouds of glory — the ענני הכבוד — were given. The connection becomes even clearer when we recall that just after his ברית מילה, on “a day when the sun shone with unusual intensity” (Bava Metzia 86b), three guests appeared before him. Despite his weakness and the scorching heat, Avraham ran to greet them, saying:

“יֻקַּח־נָא מְעַט־מַיִם... וְהִשָּׁעֲנוּ תַּחַת הָעֵץ”

“Let a little water be brought... and rest yourselves under the tree.” (Bereishit 18:4)

The sefarim hakadoshim explain that this phrase — “rest under the shade” — alludes to the future mitzvah of ישיבה בצל הסוכה, sitting in the shade of the sukkah (see Bereishit Rabbah 48:10). In that moment, Avraham transformed simple hospitality into a spiritual prototype for Sukkot itself — sheltering others in the shade of divine kindness.

Another layer; The Zohar and the Tur teach that each of the Shalosh Regalim corresponds to one of the Avot (Tur, Orach Chaim 417; Zohar, Emor 103a):

• Pesach is linked to Avraham, the embodiment of chesed (kindness), for it was on Pesach that the angels came to him — and the “dough” Sarah prepared were מצות (see Rashi on Bereishit 18:6).

• Shavuot is connected to Yitzchak, the middah of gevurah (strength), for the shofar at Matan Torah was taken from the ram of the Akeidah.

• Sukkot corresponds to Yaakov, the middah of tiferet, harmony — a synthesis of chesed and gevurah. As it says:

  “וְיַעֲקֹב נָסַע סֻכֹּתָה וַיִּבֶן לוֹ בָיִת וּלְמִקְנֵהוּ עָשָׂה סֻכֹּת”  (Bereishit 33:17)And later, after wrestling with the angel of Esav, “Yaakov journeyed to Sukkot” (ibid.).

  
  

In these verses lies the secret of the festival: the synthesis of divine attributes, the union of physical and spiritual, the home (bayit) and the shelter (sukkah). Yaakov Avinu embodies tiferet — beauty through balance — and it is precisely this balance that defines the joy and depth of Sukkot.

Still, in this blog, I want to turn toward a different idea — one that lies at the heart of our very purpose in this world: to understand how Am Yisrael is fundamentally different from the nations, and what unique mission Hashem entrusted to us. For while the sukkah reminds us of divine protection, it also reminds us of divine distinction — that our essence, our shade, and our shelter come from Hashem alone.

Of course, there are countless other layers we haven’t even begun to explore — the concept of the Ushpizin, for instance, and how each of the seven guests corresponds to a different divine attribute (middah), coming to rectify one of the seven facets of the yetzer hara, which, as Chazal tell us, has seven names (Succah 52a). Over the course of the seven days of Sukkot, each Ushpiz enters our sukkah to help us confront and refine another aspect of ourselves — and by Hoshana Rabbah, through the seven hakafot, we complete that inner process of tikkun, surrounding and subduing all remnants of negativity within and without.

Then there are the arba minim, each representing a different type of Jew, or, as the Midrash Vayikra Rabbah (30:12) teaches, different parts of the human being — intellect, heart, eyes, and mouth — all of which must be united to serve Hashem together. There are the mitzvot of the sukkah itself, which go far beyond the act of building or decorating it. They are meant to realign our perspective — to detach us, however briefly, from the illusions of permanence, status, and material comfort that dominate the rest of the year.

The Chidah writes that the greatest ma’alah — the loftiest quality — of the mitzvah of sukkah is precisely that it is the great equaliser. In his words (Midbar Kedemot, Ma’arechet Samech), the mitzvah “משווה את העשיר והעני” — places the rich and the poor on equal footing. The man who leaves his mansion, his fine furniture, and his offshore portfolio sits beside the one who owns none of it, and for seven days they share the same roof of s’chach through which the rain can fall — because that is the halachic ideal: a temporary shelter that lets heaven in.

And even this only scratches the surface. There is deep meaning in the timing of the festival — why Sukkot was placed in the seventh month, immediately after Yom Kippur, when we emerge purified and renewed, ready to dwell once more “בְּצֵלָא דְּהֵימְנוּתָא” — in the shade of faith (Zohar, Emor 103a). The depth of the mitzvah, the spiritual potency of sitting, eating, and sleeping in the sukkah, the flow of brocha and shefa that pours into the world during these days — it is all immense. And yet, perhaps the greatest secret is this: even without understanding the mystical mechanics, just being in the sukkah — simply spending time within its humble walls — uplifts, refines, and blesses a person in ways beyond comprehension.

In this post I want to stay with a single, sharper line of inquiry: what truly differentiates us from the nations, and how that difference reframes this world and the next. It’s the same first-principles question I began before Rosh Hashanah, and I’m returning to it because, without this differentiation, our purpose blurs, our suffering feels arbitrary, and our avodah loses direction. Grasp it—and life, pain, joy, mitzvot, even hope itself, all realign. That’s why I keep circling back here: to the bedrock claim of Aleinu—שֶׁלֹּא שָׂם חֶלְקֵנוּ כָּהֶם וְגוֹרָלֵנוּ כְּכָל הֲמוֹנָם—and to the Torah’s map of history that stands behind it.

For readers who missed the Rosh Hashanah piece (concise recap)

• The Torah’s template: Ha’azinu teaches that when Hashem “apportioned the nations… He set the peoples’ boundaries לְמִסְפַּר בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל,” for “כִּי חֵלֶק ה’ עַמּוֹ—Hashem’s portion is His people” (דברים ל״ב:ח–ט). Humanity’s structure was drawn around Israel.

  
  

• The lottery of nations: Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (כ״ד) describes a cosmic goral: seventy nations were assigned to seventy ministering angels—governed through nature and mazal—while Israel was drawn by Hashem Himself, governed directly, above nature.

  
  

• What Aleinu declares: Aleinu contrasts חלק (measured “portion” under angelic order) with גורל (direct “lottery” in Hashem’s hand). Saying “שֶׁלֹּא שָׂם חֶלְקֵנוּ כָּהֶם” is not politeness; it’s a constitutional claim about how Jewish history runs.

  
  

• Why extremes mark our story: Direct Providence explains our improbable survival and our dizzying highs and lows. We are not processed by the same machinery as other nations; we answer to the King above the “angels of the kings” of the nations (וַאֲנַחְנוּ כּוֹרְעִים… לִפְנֵי מֶלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים).

  
  

• The annual renewal: Many mefarshim note that this choice is renewed on Rosh Hashanah; when we bow in Aleinu, we re-affirm that covenant and Hashem chooses the Jewish Nation afresh as the chosen nation, as His portion. Hence the paradox of the day: trembling as individuals, confident as a nation.

And that’s where we left it: on Rosh Hashana there are two dockets open in Heaven—the national judgment of Am Yisrael, and the personal judgment of every soul for life, death, health, parnassah, and more. The ministering angels of the nations prosecute: “These sin and those sin—why should Israel be chosen again? Let there be a new goral, a fresh drawing.” And Hashem waits—He waits for Aleinu of Mussaf, for the moment of hishtachavaya. When we bow, the courtroom falls still. Then comes the Divine reply: “Even so—whatever they have done this year—today My people bow to Me and crown Me as King. שֶׁהֵם מִשְׁתַּחֲוִים לְהֶבֶל וָרִיק, וַאֲנַחְנוּ כּוֹרְעִים וּמִשְׁתַּחֲוִים—they do not stand here in surrender; Israel does.”  That single bow—public, physical, unanimous—decides the case. Malchuyot is not rhetoric; it is coronation. And at that instant, שֶׁלֹּא שָׂם חֶלְקֵנוּ כָּהֶם וְגוֹרָלֵנוּ כְּכָל הֲמוֹנָם is renewed for another year.

And that is where we left it. On Rosh Hashanah there is a national judgment and a personal one. And I found an idea cited in the name of the Or HaChaim that sharpened the second: even the individual judgment is set against the backdrop of the nations. First, Hashem weighs a person’s mitzvot and aveirot; but before the verdict, He “places” you opposite a comparable ben-Noach—same age, circumstances, and capacities—and asks: how different are you? It’s a staggering thought: that the din is, in part, comparative. Consider the scale alone: roughly 15.8 million who identify as Jews in a world of 8.2 billion—so for every one Jew, well over five hundred non-Jews. Finding a “match” is trivial; the contrast is the point. And that contrast, says this approach, is a chesed.

Because if judgment were purely absolute, Chazal say: נמנו וגמרו… נוח לו לאדם שלא נברא יותר משנברא; ועכשיו שנברא—יפשפש במעשיו—“They took a vote and concluded: it would have been better for a person not to have been created than to have been created; but now that he has been created, let him scrutinize his deeds” (Eruvin 13b). In other words, on a strict, abstract ledger, who could stand? But when the lens widens—not you vs. other Jews, rather you vs. a parallel non-Jew—the odds tilt mercifully, because we are constituted to show something different: שלושה סימנים יש באומה זו—רחמנים, ביישנים, וגומלי חסדים—“Three signs mark this nation: compassionate, shame-sensitive, and doers of kindness” (Yevamot 79a). And even those at our spiritual margins aren’t truly empty: אֲפִלּוּ רֵיקָנִין שֶׁבָּךְ מְלֵאִים מִצְוֹת כְּרִמּוֹן—“even your ‘empty ones’ are filled with mitzvot like a pomegranate [is filled with seeds]” (Eruvin 19a; cf. the midrashic reading of כְּפֶלַח הָרִמּוֹן רַקָּתֵךְ, Shir HaShirim 4:3). Read this way, the comparative frame isn’t triumphalism; it’s responsibility.

So, on a comparative judgment, we can almost breathe—if we can show real difference. If we blur into the nations—look the same, chase the same status and stuff, speak and think the same—then the comparison cuts against us. Chazal say that in Egypt our saving merit was distinctiveness: “שלא שינו את שמם, לשונם ולבושם”—“they did not change their names, language, or dress” (Vayikra Rabbah 32:5, and parallel midrashim). That’s the bar. How many of those markers do we still keep?

But there is another huge reprieve: Rosh Hashanah is not only about the past year; it is about who you are today. The Torah says of Yishmael, “כִּי שָׁמַע אֱלֹקִים… בַּאֲשֶׁר הוּא שָׁם”—“God heard the boy as he is there” (Bereishit 21:17). Chazal learn: “אין דנין את האדם אלא לפי מעשיו של אותה שעה”—“A person is judged according to his deeds at that moment” (Rosh Hashanah 16b). Direction matters. If, on Rosh Hashanah, we come to clear-mindedness—that Hashem is King, that this world’s dazzle is mostly hevel (futile distractions) that pull us from eternal reward—then that clarity itself sways the verdict. “בדרך שאדם רוצה לילך—מוליכין אותו”—“Along the path a person wants to go, they lead him” (Makkot 10b). Want well, and Heaven opens that road.

Think of Yaakov’s ladder: “סֻלָּם מֻצָּב אַרְצָה וְרֹאשׁוֹ מַגִּיעַ הַשָּׁמָיְמָה; וְהִנֵּה מַלְאֲכֵי אֱלֹקִים עֹלִים וְיֹרְדִים בּוֹ”—“A ladder set on the earth with its top in the heavens; and angels ascending and descending on it” (Bereishit 28:12). You can be on the lowest rung, almost earthbound—yet if your face is turned upward and you intend to climb (even slowly), you are counted among the olim (ascenders).

The converse is the warning. One can be riding high on last year’s record yet, today, be facing down—cynical, resentful, having regretted mitzvot or quietly abdicated the mission. That person is among the yordim (those descending). On Rosh Hashanah, Hashem does not only check where we stand; He checks which way we’re turned. If our face is toward the King—distinct in name, language, and dress, distinct in values and voice—then the comparative lens becomes our ally, and our direction earns us a good judgment.

I’m also embedding, in the “Learn” section of the website, a video from Rabbi Akiva Tatz that crystalizes this point: don’t imagine that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a simple “add up last year’s mitzvot vs. aveirot and stamp the result.” In Judaism, final accounts are settled at the end of life—“salary is paid when the job is complete” (cf. Avot 4:16: העולם הזה דומה לפרוזדור… “This world is a corridor to the World to Come”). The High Holidays’ judgment is primarily about direction: Where are you headed? What do you truly want? 

On that basis, Hashem allocates the coming year—tools, time, health, challenges, support—so you can move toward what you’ve declared you’re living for. This aligns with Chazal’s frame: “בַּאֲשֶׁר הוּא שָׁם”—“as he is there, now” (Bereshit 21:17), and “בַּדֶּרֶךְ שֶׁאָדָם רוֹצֶה לֵילֵךְ—מוֹלִיכִין אוֹתוֹ”—“Along the path a person wants to go, he is led” (Makkot 10b).

Chazal give us a mashal (parable) of a tree. Picture a tree. Its trunk is where the tree is planted; its branches spread into different zones—some sunny, some shaded.

• Tree A (the tzaddik): Planted in good, sunny ground—its core direction is toward Hashem and growth. Still, a few branches have crept into the shade: those are aveirot that need pruning. The pruning (painful as it can be) is rachamim—it lets the rest of the tree thrive.

• Tree B (the rasha): Planted in shade—its core direction is away from Hashem. Yet even this tree has a few branches that happen to reach sunlight: those mitzvot will be repaid, and then the tree can be uprooted.

  
  

Our task on Rosh Hashanah is to ask, “Where is my tree planted?” If it’s in poor ground—materialism-as-meaning, status-chasing, distraction-as-default—then our work is replanting: shifting the trunk toward sunlight, even if many branches still wander.

Hashem’s judgment answers one decisive question: “Do I want and need this tree in My world this year?” If yes, He gives it rain, light, and pruning—what it needs to grow—because the trunk is facing right. That’s why this season isn’t only about a backward audit; it’s a forward commitment. Plant the trunk in the sun—declare, honestly, that your ratzon is to serve Hashem, build a dwelling for Him in this world (dirah b’tachtonim), live Torah—and the year-to-year judgment can tilt in your favor, even while outstanding branches still need work.

Why am I raising this now—the comparative judgment on Rosh Hashanah, the question of where your tree is planted and which way you’re facing? Because the judgment truly concludes on Hoshana Rabbah. It’s the final day of Sukkot (with Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah a new festival), and Sukkot translates these ideas into tangible practice, not abstractions—so we can still pivot at the eleventh hour and merit a good decree.

On Rosh Hashanah we’re meant to see this world for what it is: a glittering illusion, a mousetrap where the yetzer hara fires one desire and distraction after another. And several rabbanim point out that the most piercing line in the first day’s reading may not be “Hashem remembered Sarah” or even “בַּאֲשֶׁר הוּא שָׁם” (that Yishmael was judged as he was in that moment), but “גָּרֵשׁ הָאָמָה הַזֹּאת וְאֶת בְּנָהּ”—“Cast out this maidservant and her son” (Bereishit 21:10). Read inwardly, it’s a directive to expel the non-primary desires (the “maidservant,” not the wife—i.e., urges that don’t belong at the center of a Jewish life) and their ‘son’—the actions born from those urges. That’s the work: clear the house, throw out the secondary cravings and the behaviours they breed, and make space for the primary covenant to take the lead.

One way to read Sukkot, which also explains it's placement in the Jewsih calendar directly after Yom Kippur, is that it takes all these abstractions and makes them tangible. We spend years—sometimes decades—saving, taking a massive bond, to finally afford a five-bedroom house in a decent neighbourhood, and then a few more years to fill it with Rochester furniture and SMEG appliances and maybe re-model the bathrooms and put ceasarstone in the kitchen. And then Hashem says: for seven days, leave it all and sit in a sukkah. Years of cravings get parked. We take a table, a few chairs, a simple mattress—and dwell. It’s the great equaliser: rich and poor alike live in a fragile, temporary shelter that must let the rain in. The message lands in the body: the biggest distractions of this world are, in the end, flimsy. Kohelet keeps whispering the same truth—hevel havalim—so Sukkot lets us feel it.

Several halachot of sukkah are designed to keep it from feeling permanent—because temporariness is the point. The roof (s’chach) must be from natural growth that’s been cut from the ground (not industrial roofing), it must provide shade yet still be porous enough to let rain and starlight through; the sukkah must be a dirat arai (temporary dwelling), not a dirat keva—too solid or “house-like” disqualifies it. Even its dimensions signal impermanence (e.g., not higher than 20 amot, open to the sky). All of that is a weekly sermon in wood and palm: this shelter is basic and brief—and, in the larger frame, so is life. This world isn’t our permanent address either.

If you look at the arba minim, you’ll see the same idea, made tangible. Chazal famously map the four species onto four kinds of Jews: the etrog (taste and fragrance) = Torah and mitzvot; the lulav (taste, no fragrance) = Torah without many deeds; the hadas (fragrance, no taste) = deeds without much Torah; and the aravot (neither taste nor fragrance) = those lacking both. Notice, too, how quickly the aravot wither—often by the second day of Chol HaMoed they’re already limp and need replacing. The message is blunt: a life that gathers neither Torah nor good deeds won’t have endurance in the world that truly lasts.

But here’s the deeper point: direction. There’s a halachic principle to take the species derech gideilatan—in the way they grow—i.e., upright, reaching upward. (We hold the lulav, hadasim, and aravot pointing up; the etrog is then brought upright for the na’anuim.) The symbolism writes itself: no matter which “type” you are, what matters is which way you’re pointing. You can be an “etrog” and, if you’re facing downward, it’s not right; you can be an “aravah,” but if you’re reaching up, you’re on the path. On Sukkot, even our grip says it: face Heaven, and rise.

And here’s the harder point: the distinction between Israel and the nations. Of all the mitzvot, have you noticed that Sukkot is the one most explicitly linked to the goyim? On the first day we read Zechariah 14, where the Navi states plainly that after the upheavals of Gog u’Magog, the surviving nations will be obligated to come up to Jerusalem for Sukkot—and their obedience is tied directly to rain, the world’s lifeline judged in this season.

זְכַרְיָה י״ד:ט״זוְ

הָיָה כָּל־הַנּוֹתָר מִכָּל־הַגּוֹיִם הַבָּאִים עַל־יְרוּשָׁלִַם וְעָלוּ מִדֵּי שָׁנָה בְּשָׁנָה לְהִשְׁתַּחֲו‍ֹת לְמֶלֶךְ ה' צְבָאוֹת וְלָחֹג אֶת־חַג הַסֻּכּוֹת.

And it shall be that everyone left from all the nations who came against Jerusalem shall go up year by year to bow to the King, Hashem of Hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Sukkot.

זְכַרְיָה י״ד:י״ז

וְהָיָה אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יַעֲלֶה מֵאֵת מִשְׁפְּחוֹת הָאָרֶץ אֶל־יְרוּשָׁלִַם לְהִשְׁתַּחֲו‍ֹת לְמֶלֶךְ ה' צְבָאוֹת—וְלֹא עֲלֵיהֶם יִהְיֶה הַגֶּשֶׁם.

And whoever from the families of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to bow to the King, Hashem of Hosts—upon them there will be no rain.

זְכַרְיָה י״ד:י״ח–י״ט

וְאִם מִשְׁפַּחַת מִצְרַיִם לֹא־תַעֲלֶה וְלֹא תָבוֹא—וְלֹא עֲלֵיהֶם—תִּהְיֶה הַמַּגֵּפָה אֲשֶׁר יִגֹּף ה' אֶת־הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יַעֲלוּ לָחֹג אֶת־חַג הַסֻּכּוֹת. זֹאת תִּהְיֶה חַטַּאת מִצְרַיִם וְחַטַּאת כָּל־הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יַעֲלוּ לָחֹג אֶת־חַג הַסֻּכּוֹת.

And if the family of Egypt does not go up and does not come—then upon them shall be the plague with which Hashem strikes the nations that do not go up to celebrate Sukkot. This shall be the punishment of Egypt and of all the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Sukkot.

Side point: the Gog u’Magog prophecy includes a terrifying line about “two-thirds” being cut off. That is generally understood as the mass fatality of two thirds of the world's population. Read literally against today’s ~8.2 billion, it’s unbearable. But there’s a view that this doesn’t refer to human fatalities; it refers to the collapse of two out of three belief-systems. As I wrote earlier, Chazal often frame history’s endgame around three spiritual camps: Yisrael, Edom (the Western/Christian world as an archetype), and Yishmael (the Muslim world as an archetype). Much of the “seventy nations” fold into one of those two umbrellas - 35 on the one side and 35 on the other.

In this reading (see Abarbanel on Zechariah—often cited around 13:8–9/14), the “two-thirds” signifies the ideological downfall of Edom and Yishmael, not the physical destruction of their peoples. Their systems concede error; both ultimately recognize Hashem as King. Rabbi Akiva Tatz also notes that the Far East, as a civilizational sphere, sits largely outside the classic “seventy nations” mapping and hasn’t historically defined our exile—hence the prophetic spotlight on Edom and Yishmael.

And we see another instance where we have the rendezvous being the non-jews and the Mitzvah of Sukkah: Avodah Zarah 3a

לעתיד לבוא אומר להם הקב״ה לעובדי כוכבים: מצוה קלה יש לי, וסוכה שמה; לכו ועשו סוכה. מיד כל אחד ואחד עושה סוכה בראש גגו .והקב״ה מוציא חמה מנרתיקה ומקדיר עליהן, וכל אחד ואחד מבעט בסוכתו ויוצא. אמרי: והא ישראל נמי מצטער פטור מן הסוכה !שאני ישראל — דמצטער פטור מן הסוכה.

In the future, when Hashem distributes reward to those who kept His Torah, the nations will step forward to claim a share. Their argument, says the Gemara, is hindsight: everything we built and advanced ultimately benefited the Jews—the hospitals and research, the medicines and infrastructures from which Jewish lives were saved. Hashem will answer: you did those things for yourselves—for profit, prestige, power—not out of intent to serve My people; you can’t claim credit for My plan. The nations then lodge a second claim: true, we declined the Torah when offered, but had You held a mountain over our heads—כפה עליהם הר כגיגית—as You did for Israel, we too would have accepted and performed the mitzvot. They lose that argument too, and turn to Hashem and say give us a second chance; Hashem responds with a live test: “I have a light mitzvah—Sukkah. Go and do it.” It’s deliberately a mitzvah kallah—simple, inexpensive, within everyone’s reach—no years of study, no great cost; just dwell under a roof that lets Heaven in, and show your readiness to serve.

• “Immediately each person builds a sukkah on his roof.”– They comply—externally. It’s quick, technical, performative.

• “Hashem brings the sun out of its sheath,” making an intense heat, and they can’t sit in the sukkah; each one kicks his sukkah and leaves.– The heat is not random cruelty; Chazal use this image to pressure-test sincerity. We Jews got the mitzvah of Sukkah as a reward for Avraham who went out looking for guests - "In the blazing heat of the day". We have proved ourselves, but they goyim need to show that they can do the same - still do a mitzvah when it becomes uncomfortable. And when you can't, do you walk out respectfully—or kick on the way out?

• The Gemara raises the obvious question: “But Jews too are exempt when distressed—mitzta’er patur min ha-sukkah!”– Answer: Exactly. Jews are exempt when it’s genuinely distressing. The point of the story isn’t that they left—the halacha would allow that. It’s that they kicked the sukkah: they despised the mitzvah when it stopped being convenient.

  
  

  What both Zechariah 14 and Avodah Zarah 3a drive home is this: in the prophetic and Talmudic portrayal, the nations respond when the payoff is immediate and visible. In Zechariah, their ascent for Sukkot is explicitly tied to rain, and for Egypt—who could shrug at a rain threat because of the Nile—the Navi adds plague, making the consequence concrete. In Avodah Zarah, they eagerly build sukkot, seemingly expecting reward; the moment the sun blazes, they kick the sukkah and leave—not because leaving under duress is forbidden (halachically, mitzta’er patur), but because the mitzvah, once uncomfortable and unrewarded, is despised. The contrast the texts paint is stark: avodat Hashem lishmah—service for His sake—endures even when the sun is hot; service for instant results collapses as soon as the results don’t show.

When a Jew has to step out of the sukkah—because of rain, oppressive heat, a bad smell, or any genuine distress—he doesn’t leave with a grin and say, “Baruch Hashem, I’m off the hook.” He leaves reluctantly, eyes on the sky, waiting for the rain to ease or the heat to break so he can get back under the s’chach. That’s the heart of mitzta’er patur min ha-sukkah—the exemption is real, but the yearning remains. I’ve even heard a playful twist: מִצְטַעֵר פָּטוּר מִן הַסֻּכָּה → פָּטוּר מִן הַסֻּכָּה מִצְטַעֵר—“one who is distressed is exempt from the sukkah” becomes “one who is exempt from the sukkah is distressed.” The halacha lifts the obligation; the heart refuses to let go.

And that’s why Sukkah follows Rosh Hashanah. After a judgment that is, in part, comparative—how do we measure against the nations—Hashem gives us a living A/B test: “Sit in a sukkah.” If nothing else distinguishes us, this will—not only the mitzvah itself, but our attitude to it. When we’re forced out by rain or heat, we step out reluctantly, hearts still in the shade, waiting to return. When they’re forced out, the Gemara shows, they despise the sukkah and kick it away. On that difference alone—the same pressure, two postures—Hashem has reason to choose us. And by Hoshana Rabbah, when the judgment is dispatched, that humble longing to dwell under His roof becomes our closing argument.

Of course there’s more to it. Our whole stance toward mitzvot should be lishmah—because Hashem commanded—not for payoff. As the Mishnah says: “אַל תִּהְיוּ כַּעֲבָדִים הַמְשַׁמְּשִׁין אֶת הָרַב עַל מְנָת לְקַבֵּל פְּרָס”—“Do not be like servants who serve the master on condition of receiving a reward” (Avot 1:3). And yet—even when a Jew does a mitzvah with a particular hope in mind, our sources still see the heart beneath it. “הָאוֹמֵר: סֶלַע זוֹ לִצְדָקָה, בִּשְׁבִיל שֶׁיִּחְיֶה בְנִי… הֲרֵי זֶה צַדִּיק גָּמוּר.” “If one says: ‘This coin is for tzedakah so that my son should live…’—behold, he is a complete righteous person” (Pesachim 8a). Why? Because even if the child, Heaven forbid, does not live, he does not resent the mitzvah; he won’t “kick the sukkah.” He’ll say simply, nu—tzedakah is tzedakah. The request was a prayer; the giving was obedience. That’s the difference we’ve been tracing all along: we do the mitzvah for Him, and even when we hope for a result, our loyalty isn’t contingent on getting it.

And the same is true of prayer. We daven and we do mitzvot hoping they will bring a particular result. Sometimes they do; sometimes the story ends differently than we begged for. But a Jew knows that no prayer is wasted and no mitzvah is lost—each one is banked for eternity, for the merit of the doer and for the person in whose zechus it was offered. We serve because He commanded, we hope because He is merciful, and we accept because He is King.

Wishing each of you a gut kvittel and a year of revealed good—health, light, parnassah, and calm. From the depths of my heart, thank you for every tefillah, every act of chesed, every word of Torah you’ve poured into our lives. May this post be a refuah sheleimah for Michal Chava bas Feiga Aviva. And as we step from Sukkot into the months ahead, let’s carry Sukkot’s whisper with us: this world is a temporary shelter, all smoke and mirrors; what’s real and eternal is what we pack for the road—our mitzvot, our kindness, our faith. May we live under His shade, keep facing upward, and be written for a year of growth and blessing.