A Sign of Our Emunah

“You shall dwell in sukkahs for a seven-day period … so that your generations will know that I caused the Children of Israel to dwell in booths when I took them from the land of Egypt …” (Vayikra 23:42-43)

R’ Yeshayah of Ropshitz notes that the mitzvah of sukkah represents the enduring emunah and bitachon of the Jewish People. The four walls of the sukkah that surround us separate us from the outside world, while on top it is open and our eyes look upwards towards Hashem.

The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 3a) relates that in the future the nations of the world will complain that they were not given the opportunity to have the Torah and mitzvos. Hashem says He will give them an easy mitzvah to fulfill – the mitzvah of sukkah. They will immediately build their sukkahs and Hashem will bring out the sun and the heat will become intense. At that point they will become very uncomfortable and leave the sukkah, kicking it on their way out.

R’ Yeshaya explains that the reason they kick the sukkah is because it had separated them from the material world. They were not ready to give that up and to place their emunah only in Hashem.

Not only is the sukkah a sign of our emunah in Hashem, but when we hold the lulav and esrog in our hand and shake them back and forth we are declaring, “Just as the species cannot exist without You, Hashem, so too we are totally dependent on You.”

Shia was a 20-year-old Holocaust survivor, who emerged from the devastation with unwavering faith. He raised a family in Switzerland, and earned his livelihood with an esrog orchard that he planted in Italy. For a good portion of the year, he was able to study Torah without interruption, and he spent the remainder of the months away from home working in the orchard. He was basically content. His livelihood was adequate and his children carried the names of his relatives who had been killed al kiddush Hashem.

He did have one wound in his soul that could not heal. At the beginning of the Shoah, he had become separated from his twin brother, Yankel, and never heard from him again. Nevertheless, Shia held on to this irrational conviction that his brother was still alive.

Close to Sukkos one year, Shia was standing in line to buy his ticket to return to Switzerland, after being away for a number of months. When he reached the ticket booth, he reached into his pocket to pay for the ticket, but the money was not there. He quickly searched the other pocket, but it too was empty. All the money he had earned for the year had disappeared!

Meanwhile the clerk was getting impatient, and he finally asked Shia to move aside so the other people could purchase their tickets.

Shia was left alone in a strange city with no money to return home. He thought about his family who were waiting to celebrate the chag together with him. He had no kosher food, no sukkah, and knew of no Jews in the area.

What kind of Yom Yov would he have?

But Shia remained steadfast in his emunah that just as Hashem had saved him from the Shoah and remained with him all this time, He would not leave Shia now.

Shia went to the post office to send a telegram notifying his family about his predicament so they should not worry about him. Once again, he stood in line. Suddenly, he felt a hand on his shoulder. When he turned around, he saw a Yid with a big smile on his face, and a big yarmulke on his head standing behind him.

Shia told Jake about his predicament, and Jake related a similar tale of how he was stranded in Italy after coming here for business and would be unable to return to his home in America.

“Now I won’t be alone,” said Jake, and he invited Shia to join him. He had already built his sukkah, and obtained kosher food as well as a set of arba minim.

Shia was happy to have company, and after sending out the telegram to his wife, he joined Jake for a short ride to his accommodations. Shia lacked for nothing except that he missed his family. They had a beautiful seudah, they exchanged divrei Torah, and then they went to sleep in the sukkah.

The next morning Shia’s esrog and Jake’s other three minim were joined for the mitzvah of netilas lulav. However, when Shia looked closely at Jake’s lulav, he began to tremble. Jake’s lulav was bound with golden rings, an ancient tradition that not many followed. Shia began to hum the niggun with the words from the Mishna (Sukkah 3:8), “It happened with the people of Jerusalem who would bind their lulavim with golden rings,” – a song that his father would sing as he bound his lulav with the golden rings. Suddenly, he heard Jake singing along.

The two looked at each other in amazement with tears in their eyes, as they realized that the two of them shared this uncommon memory of a tradition that had been brought down in their family through the generations.

In shock, Jake called out, “Shia! I don’t believe this! It can’t be true!”

From that day on the two brothers were inseparable.