The word nei’lah comes from the word na’ul, which means locked. During the Ne’ilah service on Yom Kippur, we are locked into a relationship with God, who has instilled part of Himself into us in the form of His Divine spark.
During the rest of the year, extraneous forces try to intrude and prevent that Divine spark from igniting our entire being. But on Yom Kippur those forces are locked out. Their power is weakened by lack of food and by the shedding of material comfort. Their beckoning voices are drowned out by the sound of prayer.
For one day, our internal pilot light is reunited with its Source as we take stock of ourselves and appreciate who we really are and who we can really become.
According to the sages, as long as we fast, pray, and abstain from certain other physical activities, the day of Yom Kippur itself achieves for us the atonement we seek. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, explains this phenomenon in the following way: Once the Divine spark within us is allowed to rid itself of the shades of darkness that dim it during the rest of the year and is free to shine in all its brilliance, no trace of sin remains present, just as no trace of sin is present in God Himself.
But soon Nei’lah ends, the gates are flung open, and the darkness threatens again to engulf the spark and relegate it to the dark recesses of the soul.
And so we are told that after returning home from Ne’ilah and breaking our fast, the first activity we should engage in is building a sukkah.
What is it about the sukkah that allows the Divine Spark to carry its brilliance into the New Year?
The sukkah is one of the few mitzvot that neutralizes those ominous forces by enveloping our entire bodies and souls in performing it. The sukkah is compared to God’s clouds of glory that protected us from the elements as we trudged through the desert. The sukkah also has the power to protect the Divine Spark within us from the elements that threaten to dim it.
The sukkah is the halfway house between Nei’lah and the New Year and trains us how to live our lives all year round.
We don’t just pray and learn in the sukkah. We live there, eat and sleep there, and conduct our day-to-day lives there, just as we will do in our homes when Sukkot ends.
The message of Sukkot is that during the rest of the year too we should let God into all aspects of our lives. We should not imprison God in the synagogue and expel Him from everything else. Rather, we should sanctify our secular lives by making him omnipresent and allowing Him, through His Torah, to guide us in all our activities whatever the time, wherever we are, and whatever we do. That is what our sages mean by the words “acknowledge Him in all your activities.”
The sukkah also teaches another message. It creates a level playing field between the haves and the have-nots.
Whether we live year-round in a mansion or a hovel, we all leave our permanent residences and move into a primitive structure we can all afford. This equality is the hallmark of Jewish citizenship. The verse that all Israelites shall dwell in sukkot is interpreted by the Talmud to mean that all of Israel is to fit into one sukkah. And when we move back into our respective homes we will remember the lesson of the sukkah: that we all belong under one roof and all are equally privileged.