Midreshet Amit

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In VaYikra 23:42-3, God gives us the command to dwell in sukkot and He specifies the reason He wants us to do so: " בסוכות תשבו שבעת ימים . . . למען ידעו דורותיכם כי בסוכות הושבתי את בני ישראל בהוציאי אותם מארץ מצרים " - You shall dwell in booths seven days . . . so that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. A compelling question that emerges from these pesukim is that in all of the descriptions of the Jews' encampment in the midbar, never once are we told that they lived in sukkot. Sukkot do not seem to have been fundamental element of the desert experience. Why, then, are sukkot the symbol chosen to represent the desert years, rather than perhaps some representation of manna, for example?

Both Rav Mordechai Breuer in his book, Pirkei Mo'adot (p. 570-581) and Rabbi Michael Berger in his article "The Mo'adim of Parshat Emor" (which can be found on Yeshivat Har Etzion's website) note a fascinating feature about sukkot that aids in answering this question. They point out that even without the mitzvah of sukkah, the Jews would have been in sukkot at this time of year anyway. It is z'man ha'asif and even the non-Jews erected temporary shelters in their fields so as to be near their crops during this critical period. Several pesukim in Nevi'im Achronim make reference to these agricultural booths. For example, in his description of the desolation that has come upon the land due to the people's iniquity, Yeshayahu laments that "ונותרה בת ציון כסוכה בכרם " - The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard (1:8). The image is that of the temporary sukkot that all farmers erected in their vineyards at the commencement of z'man ha'asif and then abandoned when the ingathering period came to an end.

God chose the sukkah to become the medium through which we recreate the desert experience because by informing us that the purpose of the sukkot is "so that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt," God transforms B'nei Yisrael's agricultural huts into symbols of the sukkot of the midbar. God converts the very booths that could have become a symbol of Man's hard-earned wealth and mastery over nature into a symbol of the exact opposite - Man's dependence upon God. As we leave these sukkot every

morning to gather the crops over which we have toiled, it is as if we are walking out of the sukkot of the midbar to collect the manna. The crops that we are now gathering are as much from the hand of God as the manna in the desert.
We are no longer living in an agricultural society and thus are not sensitive to the brilliant transformation that God performed upon the farmers' huts. However, I believe that if we each invested a little time to think seriously about it, we could each come up with a few examples from our own lives in which God subtly communicated a message to us that just when we thought we were entirely in control of our lives, really He is there right beside us, playing an active role as well. As we sit in our sukkot, I encourage all of us (myself included) to take some time to reflect upon our relationship with God, His personal care for us, and our dependence upon Him for all of the blessings we enjoy.