This D’var Torah was given over by Ari Fuld on Oct. 4, 2017 as part of his Grill & Torah Series.
It has been edited from the original transcript.
We are just a half hour away from the entrance of the chag, the special chag called Sukkot, and I want to give a little bit of Torah right before the chag—a little bit about what Sukkot is and what happiness is.
For those who don’t understand the connection, Chag Sukkot, the Tabernacle Holiday as some people call it, is the only holiday which actually mentions a commandment to be happy. In other words, we’re happy on other holidays, but only on Chag Sukkot is there a specific commandment to be happy. And so the question is: Why? What is Sukkot, and what is it about this holiday that connects it specifically to happiness?
On Chag Sukkot, we’re commemorating the fact that HaKadosh Baruch Hu, that God, kept us safe in the desert and put protection around us. We commemorate that by putting ourselves in these temporary huts, which, if you live in an area like the one I live in, the wind can blow the top off in a second if it comes in too strong.
So this holiday is a little bit strange. We’re coming out of the comfort of our own homes and going into this hut, which is temporary and can be blown over very easily in a storm. And yet, even though we’re going out of the comfort of our own home, this is the holiday on which we’re commanded to be happy. So the question has to be asked: What’s happy about that? What exactly are we being happy about?
Well, the answer is exactly that.
Unfortunately, I was just at a horrific funeral—a horrible tragedy of a young woman who died after suffering a stroke and then a brain tumor. And I’m driving home and thinking about the little things in life. Who are we? What makes you happy? You get the iPhone 8. Does that make you happy? You get the new car. Does that make you happy?
When you’re six years old, you get a new toy. Tinker Toys, right? Whatever six-year-olds play with today. They’re so happy. Happiest day ever. Then when you turn eleven, you get a new PlayStation, and again it’s the happiest you can ever be. You grow older, and the toys switch. The toys change. But they’re just toys.
When do we realize they’re toys? We realize they’re toys when things are not going well. We realize they’re toys when, God forbid, someone dies, and all of a sudden we understand that those toys don’t really mean anything. The fancy cars don’t mean anything.
Happiness should not be connected with what we have in our hands—the tangible things, how much money we have, the beautiful car or whatever it might be. Those things are important. You can be happy with all those things. But that is not the definition of happiness. The definition of happiness goes much, much deeper than the tangible things we have in our lives.
I don’t believe there’s anyone out there who would sell their child for any amount of money in the world. Money is just money. There are things that are much more important.
And so what are we doing on Sukkot? We’re coming out of the comfort of our own zone. We’re coming into this temporary hut, where you can get cold, you can get hot, the wind blows, cats come in. You’re not protected by the things we think make us safe in this world. And yet we’re commanded to be happy, because we’re touching upon the real happiness—the important things in life.
We’re realizing that we’re not in control. We can try. We can go to school. We can study. We can go to great interviews and do everything we can. But at the end of the day, God is in control.
And that is exactly the point. It’s not about the perfect lighting. It’s not about the perfect car or the perfect house. Those things are all enjoyable and very, very good to have in life, but that’s not happiness. Happiness is taking yourself out of your comfort zone and realizing that you’re not in control.
Someone who doesn’t believe in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, someone who doesn’t believe in God, when something bad happens, where do they turn? If everything happens by chance, if the Big Bang was an “oops” or an accident, then when bad things happen, there is no explanation. We just die, and that’s it.
When it comes to Judaism, it’s exactly the opposite. Even when bad things happen, we say there is a reason. We don’t know the reason. It doesn’t make bad things easier to suffer, God forbid. It can be very difficult. But we know there is a reason in life.
The Illusion of Security
So we’re taking ourselves out of the comfort of our own homes—the stone walls, the locked front door and the security. It’s all false security, people.
People study at top universities and end up waiting tables. They put effort into all kinds of things and end up not succeeding. There’s a sentence, “Man plans and God laughs.” It doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from the Torah: “Rabot machashavot b’lev ish, va’atzat Hashem hi takum.” There are many thoughts in a person’s heart, but the counsel of God is what is ultimately going to happen.
We have a commandment to put our effort into life. Yes, put your effort in. Do what you can to succeed. But never, at the end, think that your effort itself was the success, because there are people who put in just as much effort and didn’t succeed as much as you might have.
And therefore we’re coming out and saying: You know what? I’m a human being. My body is fragile, my life is fragile, and my house made out of stone is fragile.
Those in America who experienced the hurricanes felt that themselves. And those in Nevada who were horrifically affected by that terrible attack and murder—you go there, everything is happy-go-lucky. “We’re going to go here, we’re going to go there, we’re going to go home,” and boom. It’s over. A horrible thing.
So we’re not in control. That is simply reality. You wake up in the morning and expect to go to sleep that night. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn’t happen. You study and expect to get that job or get into that university. Sometimes it doesn’t happen.
But when one prays, at least in Judaism, you’re not supposed to pray to God and say, “God, please give me this job.” No. You say, “HaKadosh Baruch Hu, dear Hashem, if this job is fit for me, if this is what’s good for my life—not only for money, but for who I am as a human being and who I am as a Jew—then let me get this job. And if this job is not fit for me, no matter how much I studied, then don’t give me the job, because it’s not good for me.”
It’s like a parent with a child. The child wants to have fun all his life. He wants to do dangerous things, and the parent stops him. The child gets upset with the parent, and the parent says, “I’m doing this for you.”
There are things we don’t understand. Horrible things happen in life. The Holocaust. We want vengeance for that. And I’m not saying it’s comfortable, or that because of God suddenly I don’t have questions. No. I have questions beyond belief.
That’s not the point. The point is facing your reality and realizing that happiness is so much deeper than the house that we have, than the car that we drive, than the amount of money we have in the bank.
So we’re pulling ourselves out of that facade of happiness, out of that facade of security, out of that facade of tangible things that we think make us happy. We’re pulling ourselves out of that matrix, out of that false sense of reality, and putting ourselves in the hands of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, putting ourselves in the hands of God in this hut, and realizing that happiness goes much deeper than the tangible things we have.
Back in the Land of Israel
And there’s another incredible part of this holiday. Sukkot is one of the three major holidays in Judaism—Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot—the holidays when Jews went up to the Temple. We were seen in Jerusalem three times a year.
And for 2,000 years, that city was desolate and quiet from the Jewish people. And we’re back. Here I am in Judea, Israel, in a sukkah in Judea, Israel.
Miraculous.
And just recently, the security team that I’m on in Efrat caught terrorists who were planning a horrible attack in my town. Thank God, we captured a terrorist before he was able to successfully carry out an attack right here.
And really: Thank God.
Our guns and our vests and our training—it’s all very important. Thank God is the end game. We cannot do it without HaKadosh Baruch Hu.
So I want to thank HaKadosh Baruch Hu, thank God, for giving us the opportunity to come back to the Land of Israel; for giving us the opportunity to, yes, wear protective gear and, yes, have our guns and protect Israel from those who want to destroy us.
And of course, we have to have hakarat hatov. We have to recognize the security team, the commanders, and the people watching the cameras. All of you are part of this miracle called Israel and the survival of the Jewish people.
From the beautiful, stunning rolling hills of Judea, Israel, have a very happy and spiritual Sukkot.
Chag Sameach.