The Joy of Liberation

 

New York-Rabbi : Yakov David

The journey from the Days of Awe to Sukkot is a movement from constraint to expansion. Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur belong to the realm of judgment; bounded, exacting, demanding reckoning. Sukkot removes those limits entirely. It is called “the season of our rejoicing” precisely because joy, by its nature, knows no boundaries; Its very essence is the breaking of limits.

This is hinted at in the verse “His left hand under my head, His right arm embraces me.” (Song of Songs 2:6) The left hand, the side of strict justice, is the Days of Awe. The right arm, expansive and embracing, is Sukkot. The sukka’s very structure, requiring two full walls and a bare handbreadth of a third, mirrors this embrace: the shape of an arm drawing someone close. The sukka itself is a divine embrace.

Joy always moves outward from a center, breaking through what has been closed and confined. This is why we recite throughout Sukkot: “Out of the straits I called to God; God answered me with expansiveness” (Psalms 118:5). The straits are the narrow world of judgment; the expansiveness is the joy that follows escape from it.

Seen together, the three occasions form a single arc. Rosh HaShana measures and judges. Yom Kippur transitions. It is purifying, yet still forward and severe. Sukkot culminates the process: what was concealed is now revealed, “on the day of our festival,” in plain sight.

Sukkot’s joy reaches deeper still, to sasson, an inner joy beyond ordinary rejoicing, drawn “joyfully from the springs of salvation.” This joy does not stay hidden as a private spark; It bursts forth for all to see, like flowing water.

For this reason, Sukkot is called “the sukka of Your peace”, a festival of unity, gathering the Jewish people and even the nations who once came to the Temple, joining heaven and earth, all of existence rejoicing together in its liberation.

– From the book Change and Renewal by Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsal.