Uncovering the Meaning of Sekhakh -- Sukkot 5773

In the past week or so, I’ve been thinking quite a bit, as you might imagine, about sukkah construction - what makes it a sukkah, what makes it kosher, what makes it acceptable for fulfilling the mitzvah of “leshev basukkah,” dwelling in the sukkah, one of the principle mitzvot unique to the festival of Sukkot.  Curiously, all of the relevant literature explained the textual basis for the halakhic specifications for the sukkah, but nowhere could I find good reasons for the intent behind said halakhah.  There is a lot of “what” and “how”, but not so much “why”.  (Not that this is so unusual in Judaism, but I have found that the “why” is a much more powerful motivator than the “how.”)

Specifically, I was looking for something about the roof of the sukkah.  You may know that the covering, known in Hebrew as sekhakh (a word which comes from the same shoresh / root as sukkah) must be made from materials that grow from the ground, but why?  I checked many, many sources, and could not find anything so satisfactory.
 
We’re going to take a look at some of those sources for a bit, and then I would like to propose a reason for it -- that is, a reason beyond, “because it says so in the Talmud.”  
 
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Here are the traditional sources, with one modern one.  Sorry for not putting up all the Hebrew -- I ran out of time before Yom Tov.  Skip to the bottom to see the conclusions.

1.  Genesis 2:6

וְאֵד, יַעֲלֶה מִן-הָאָרֶץ, וְהִשְׁקָה, אֶת-כָּל-פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה.

...but a mist would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth.

2.  Leviticus 23:43

...in order that future generations may know that I [God] made the Israelite people live in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.

3.  Deuteronomy 16:13

You shall hold the Festival of Sukkot for seven days, at the ingathering from your threshing and your wine-press.

4.  Nehemiah 8:14-15 (6th century BCE)

They found written in the Teaching [Torah] that the Lord had commanded Moses that the Israelites must dwell in booths during the festival of the seventh month, and that they must announce and proclaim throughout all their towns and Jerusalem as follows: “Go out to the mountains and bring leafy branches of olive trees, pine trees, myrtles, palms and [other] leafy trees to make booths, as it is written.”

5.  Mishnah Sukkah 1:4 (2nd century CE)

If one trained over [the sukkah] a vine or a gourd or an ivy and covered it over [with sekhakh], it is invalid.  But if the sekhakh were more than these, or they were cut, it is valid.
This is the general principle: Whatever is susceptible to ritual impurity and does not grow from the earth may not be used to cover the sukkah; but whatever is not susceptible to ritual impurity and grows from the earth may be used as sekhakh.

6.  Babylonian Talmud, Massekhet Sukkah 11b (5th century CE)

THIS IS THE GENERAL RULE: WHATEVER IS SUSCEPTIBLE TO RITUAL IMPURITY etc. How do we know this? Resh Lakish said: Scripture says, “But there went up a mist from the earth” (Gen. 2:6); just as a mist is a thing that is not susceptible to ritual impurity and originates from the soil, so must the sekhakh be a thing that is not susceptible to ritual impurity, and grow from the soil. That is satisfactory according to the authority who says that [the booths of the wilderness were] clouds of glory... For it has been taught: “‘For I made the children of Israel to dwell in Sukkot’ (Lev. 23:43). These were clouds of glory, so says R. Eliezer.” ...

7.  Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Shofar veSukkah veLulav 5:1 (12th century CE)

The sekhakh may not be appropriate if made from any item.  One may only cover the sukkah with those things that have grown from the earth and that have been uprooted from the earth, and that are not susceptible to uncleanness, and that have no bad odor and do not shed and are not always wilting.

8.  Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, from Chabad.org (20th century CE)
 

The primary halakhic element of the sukkah is the sekhakh covering, made of branches. The covering takes on the holiness of the sukkah, and even after the holiday ends, it is forbidden to use the sekhakh for any mundane purpose. The sekhakh thus represents the act of transforming a physical part of the universe into something holy, from which the sacredness does not depart. This is the entire purpose of the Holy Temple, to take elements of the physical world and make them into an everlasting dwelling for God.

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Sukkot is a holiday that directly follows Yom Kippur, just after having (ideally) achieved our repentance from all that we have done wrong in the past year, our having been cleansed of our sins.  There is a sense of rebirth that surrounds Sukkot.  We call it “zeman simhateinu,” the time of our happiness.  This is a festival of pure, unadulterated joy in the wake of the hard work that we put into seeking teshuvah just a few days earlier.  It’s kind of like the calm, self-satisfied feeling that you get after working out.
 
And then, rather than rest, we move out into these temporary huts.  What’s the message?
The sekhakh enables us to see the stars, and to let the sun and the rain through.  It does not separate us out from the natural world, from God’s creation; rather, spending time in the sukkah connects us to nature and to Avinu Shebashamayim, to our God in heaven. The sekhakh is not so much a roof, but a kind of active filter, enhancing our limited connection with the sky.  But there is even more here.
 
The sekhakh must be cut (i.e. dead) things that were once connected to the ground.  Many of you know that I am a gardener and an advocate of getting in touch with God through gardening, and what comes with that is a (curiously enough) a love of compost.  Compost is emblematic of the cycle of life: plants grow and flourish, taking nutrients from the soil; then they die, they decompose, and they provide more nutrients for subsequent generations.  
 
(By the way, there are hints of this in Jewish text as well, related to our own cycle of life.  Of our beloved departed we say, “Tehi nishmato tzerurah bitzror hahayyim” - may his soul be bound up in the bond of life.  What is tzeror hahayyim / the bond of life?  It is that which connects this cycle of life to the next, and repeats again.  Those who have passed on continue to nourish the living.)
 
The sekhakh is the part of the sukkah that connects us to the heavens, the sun and rain.  Since all the materials in the roof are compostable, this amalgam of rain, sun, and nutrients (those produced by decomposing plants) are all that nourish plants, and therefore animals, and therefore us.  Add to this Rabbi Schneerson’s formulation of the sekhakh as creating a kind of holy vessel.  My proposal is this: it is the combination of these physical and spiritual requirements that give us everything that human life needs.  This is what the sekhakh represents: a tangible metaphor for our physical and spiritual needs.
 
And this is a perfect message for the rebirth of Sukkot.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered / discussed at Temple Israel of Great Neck, second day of Sukkot, Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012.)

Sukkot 5773 - A Good Reason to Live in Your Sukkah

Live in the sukkah?  Are you crazy?

Well, yes.  That is indeed the point.  When I arrived in Great Neck five years ago, I was so pleased to find that so many members of Temple Israel build their own sukkot.  I am not aware of a single member of our community, however, who actually moves out of the house and into the sukkah for seven days.  (And that includes your humble rabbinic correspondent and his family.)

Because you'd have to be really crazy to do that.  And yet, that's what the Torah tells us (Leviticus 23:42): “Basukkot teshvu shiv’at yamim.”  You shall live in booths seven days.  The rabbis of the Talmud (Sukkot 26a-b) debate whether one may eat a food item smaller than an egg, or take a short nap outside of the sukkah during the festival of Sukkot.

And the reason, of course, is not just to recall the forty years of desert wandering.  If that were the case, would sukkah-dwelling be required?  After all, we recall the nighttime Exodus from Egypt over dinner during Pesah; no need to actually vacate the premises or part the waters of the neighbors’ swimming pool.  No, the reason is much deeper.  It is to remind us that cushioned accommodations are temporary, and that our comfortable lives can be quickly turned upside-down, so we should not take our shelter for granted.
 
When I first wrote these remarks, a few hours after the end of Rosh Hashanah, my home sat entirely dark except for a few candles.  Our electricity went out late in the afternoon on the second day of 5773, and seven hours later I was fortunate to have a laptop with juice (although lamentably no wi-fi).  The tornado watch had already passed, but I heard from my wind-up radio that there were over 5,000 homes on Long Island without power.  I continued to hear the sirens of emergency vehicles going by on Old Mill Road, and I prayed that nobody was in danger.  I was also hoping that the power would come back on before all the food in my refrigerator spoiled; unfortunately, some Rosh Hashanah leftovers had to be tossed.

But this brings me back to an even greater reason to live in sukkot for a week.  This is the second time this summer, and the latest in a handful of weather events of the past few years that included tornado conditions in our region, something that never used to happen in the New York area.  It is (admittedly anecdotal) evidence that our climate is changing, that the so-called “greenhouse gases” that we all produce are affecting weather patterns all over the world.

The average American, through our energy and food consumption habits, produces nearly 20 tons of carbon dioxide per year.  That is twice the rate of that produced by the Japanese and the Europeans, and four to ten times what average Chinese, Brazilians, and Indians produce.  Sukkot is a reminder that (a) we can live without some of our energy-intensive creature comforts; and (b) that someday we may have no choice, because continued consumption at our current rate is not sustainable.

OK, so I won't be moving out into the sukkah this year.  But as bigger issues have pushed the environment off the political agenda this election season, I welcome this festival’s gentle reminder that our climate is changing, and that it is not yet too late to solve this problem.  We may not need to live in simple huts just yet, but if the idea of living with less might help us prevent tornados in major urban centers, that is surely a Sukkot message that we all need to hear.