What happens in Sukkot?
It is kicked off with a very unusual verse. The Torah “a night of his guarding to Hashem, to bring them out of the land of Egypt; this night is to Hashem, guarding to all the children of Israel to their generations.” This is followed by a set of timeless laws and promises – concerning Pesach, the sanctification of the first born, the promise of the land and even Tefillin. And, then, the people leave. Oddly, while they are in Sukkot the text says they journeyed “by the way of the wilderness by the Red Sea.” Again, Sukkot seems to be a non-place. It seems to be a state of mind; a place in which we integrate the permanence of the divine into our lives. It is the place where we first experience the unchanging.
It doesn’t seem transitory.
The last use of Sukkot occurs with the Mishkan. When Hashem commands us to construct it, He says: “And thou shalt put therein the ark of the testimony, and thou shalt Sukkah the ark with the veil.”
The ark is the ultimate timeless article. Nothing changes around it from year to year. It is the physical manifestation of permanence. When we construct a cover for this permanence, it is a statement of the spiritually unending. The ark dwells ‘in Sukkot.’ It dwells in a settled and permanent state of being.
The encounter with the timeless stability of the divine occurs within the Sukkot.
We envision Sukkot as temporary, but perhaps we have it backwards.
Perhaps Sukkot represents the spiritually unchanging.
When Yaacov travelled towards Sukkot, he built there and made it his settled place. Although he was unsuccessful, he tried to establish the unchanging. We stayed in Sukkot when we left Egypt. It was there that we were gifted with the unchanging Mitzvot. And, finally, we covered the ark with the veil – and established a home for the unchanging divine.
Sukkot is a state of mind. It is the experience of the unchanging and of the divine.