Taking Ownership of our Lives
According to the Talmud, you cannot build a Sukkah directly under a tree as the tree is already established. Already accomplished. And not with your own hands. By your own effort. The mitzvah of building a Sukkah must be Talush, meaning, in the creation, in the doing, in the transforming, in the building, in the human physical effort.
There is a Mishna (the original written version of the Talmud, the Oral Law, circa 200 CE) about Rabbi Akiba and Turnus Rufus, the Roman governor of Palestine. Rufus asks Akiva: “Which is greater, man’s work or God’s work?” Rabbi Akiba concludes the former, and then gathers sheaves of wheat in one hand and completed bread in his other. The bread, Akiva teaches Rufus, is the transaction between God and man. “God gives us the seed and the earth and the wheat, but it is the will of man, the capacity of man, to transform the wheat in to bread. The grape into wine.” (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Bava Batra, 10a)
The focus on the Holiday of Sukkot, Chag HaAsif, the Festival of Harvesting, is about personal productivity and achievement. The pleasure of ownership and self-sufficiency:
שִׁבְעַת יָמִים תָּחֹג לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר-יִבְחַר יְהוָה: כִּי יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכֹל תְּבוּאָתְךָ וּבְכֹל מַעֲשֵׂה יָדֶיךָ וְהָיִיתָ אַךְ שָׂמֵחַ
“Seven days you will celebrate (the holiday of Sukkot) before Adonai in the place that God will choose [the Temple in Jerusalem] for Adonai blessed all your produce and all that you have made with your own hands, so be very happy.” (Deuteronomy 16:15)
In other words, our Torah teaches us that we can only understand life by living in it. By taking action. “In the beginning there was the Deed.” wrote Goethe in Faust. “We will first act, Na’aseh, and afterwards, eventually, through extended practice, we come to an understanding, ve’Nishma,” taught Moses in Sefer Shemot, the Book of Exodus.
Let us commit to this Sukkot and beyond, to embrace our inalienable capacity to make life choices. To reject social and political (they are one and the same) messages of historical, racial, class, gender and other inevitabilities. To embrace the Torah’s call to engage fully in our lives as, to paraphrase the great 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote, ‘free individuals not hindered to do what we have a will to do.' “If we dwell only in the dream,” writes Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, ‘we forget to get our hands dirty working to repair our reality.
According to the Talmud, you cannot build a Sukkah directly under a tree as the tree is already established. Already accomplished. And not with your own hands. By your own effort. The mitzvah of building a Sukkah must be Talush, meaning, in the creation, in the doing, in the transforming, in the building, in the human physical effort.
There is a Mishna (the original written version of the Talmud, the Oral Law, circa 200 CE) about Rabbi Akiba and Turnus Rufus, the Roman governor of Palestine. Rufus asks Akiva: “Which is greater, man’s work or God’s work?” Rabbi Akiba concludes the former, and then gathers sheaves of wheat in one hand and completed bread in his other. The bread, Akiva teaches Rufus, is the transaction between God and man. “God gives us the seed and the earth and the wheat, but it is the will of man, the capacity of man, to transform the wheat in to bread. The grape into wine.” (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Bava Batra, 10a)
The focus on the Holiday of Sukkot, Chag HaAsif, the Festival of Harvesting, is about personal productivity and achievement. The pleasure of ownership and self-sufficiency:
שִׁבְעַת יָמִים תָּחֹג לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר-יִבְחַר יְהוָה: כִּי יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכֹל תְּבוּאָתְךָ וּבְכֹל מַעֲשֵׂה יָדֶיךָ וְהָיִיתָ אַךְ שָׂמֵחַ
“Seven days you will celebrate (the holiday of Sukkot) before Adonai in the place that God will choose [the Temple in Jerusalem] for Adonai blessed all your produce and all that you have made with your own hands, so be very happy.” (Deuteronomy 16:15)
In other words, our Torah teaches us that we can only understand life by living in it. By taking action. “In the beginning there was the Deed.” wrote Goethe in Faust. “We will first act, Na’aseh, and afterwards, eventually, through extended practice, we come to an understanding, ve’Nishma,” taught Moses in Sefer Shemot, the Book of Exodus.
Let us commit to this Sukkot and beyond, to embrace our inalienable capacity to make life choices. To reject social and political (they are one and the same) messages of historical, racial, class, gender and other inevitabilities. To embrace the Torah’s call to engage fully in our lives as, to paraphrase the great 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote, ‘free individuals not hindered to do what we have a will to do.' “If we dwell only in the dream,” writes Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, ‘we forget to get our hands dirty working to repair our reality.