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Shemot

Exodus 33:12-34:26

Numbers 29:17-22

Yechezkel/Ezekiel 38:18-39:16

I just had to get out of the city. I loved university life but was sorely in need of a respite from the concrete jungle that is named Manhattan. But fall break coincided with Sukkot, so any camping adventure I planned would need to involve a sukkah booth in which to eat and sleep. Looking around, I found that there are indeed sukkah designs about the size of a phone booth, but at $199 they were out of the question.

With some research into the intricacies of Jewish law, a bit of creative design and a trip to the hardware store I got everything I needed to build the best sukkah I’ve ever enjoyed. It was about 5 square feet, rolled up into a bundle on the side of my backpack, weighed less than 12 pounds, was 100 percent kosher, and — best of all — I found that the forest floor offers the most beautiful schach (branches for the roof) at every turn. The materials cost only about $40, which wasn’t free but was far better than anything prefabricated.

So imagine my surprise upon uncovering a talmudic passage that thinks a sukkah is free! In tractate Avodah Zarah, the Talmud shares a legend: There will come a day in the future of the world when the nations that have behaved cruelly will come before HaShem and protest their innocence, demanding that HaShem give them a Torah on the spot so that they can prove that they will follow it just like the Jewish people.

HaShem responds by calling their post-facto assertions foolish, and declares, “Whoever toils on Friday has food to eat on Shabbat, but as for one who did not work on Friday — what will he eat? All the same, I have an easy mitzvah [with which to test you as you request] and it is called sukkah. Go do it.” The Talmud goes on to ask why sukkah is called an “easy” mitzvah, and explains that “it does not involve an out of pocket loss.” Each of the aforementioned nations runs out to build a sukkah, but as the heat of the blazing sun gets to them, they each kick the sukkah as they leave it.

Perhaps there is a message here about connection to Jewish life. In their give and take, HaShem makes the point that it is easy to look back after you see that something was worthwhile and claim that you would have done it too.

But it takes far more commitment and courage to “toil before Shabbat,” to put in time and effort before you know whether this will turn out to have been worth the expenditure. The value and impact of our religious endeavors is often unclear to us in the moment, but rather becomes apparent in the broad sweep and view of one’s life picture.

This may help explain why the nations left because of the heat and kicked the sukkah on their way out. Their inability to appreciate the benefit of an action in the face of discomfort and challenge leads them to decide that it is worthless, changing their values to fit their behavior instead of the other way around.

That may explain why they are taught through sukkah, which is an all-encompassing mitzvah. One lives within a sukkah, a symbol for how a Jewish life can be an all-encompassing immersion with impact and wisdom for all areas of our daily existence. So HaShem challenges them to try a sukkah.

And in fact, the Talmud doesn’t say that it is “free,” but rather that there is no loss from one’s pocket. Why? Because necessary expenditures for daily life aren’t monetary losses. Is it a “loss” to buy groceries, or provide for a roof over one’s head? Yet the nations in this legend fail to appreciate this concept.

When we allow ourselves to integrate our relationship with HaShem into our lives instead of viewing it as something external, we do gain. We relieve ourselves of calculating our net gain for each mitzvah and allow ourselves to enjoy basking in the relationship with HaShem.

Rabbi Judah Dardik is the spiritual leader at Orthodox Beth Jacob Congregation in Oakland. He can be reached at [email protected].