Yonah Continued

 

In many ways, Sukkot represents the culmination of the teshuva process, but in a more primal way. In a certain respect, after a person comes to terms with the fact that he is loved just for the way he is, for his very and every effort, like the people of Ninveh, he is summoned to leave behind the newfound comfort, the stable ground attained, and step outside. Perhaps like Avraham stepping beyond himself to see the stars above, to realize that his destiny is infinite if he expands his comfort zone, so too – nestled in our protective lanugo – we are immediately wrested from the comfort and forced outside into a milieu not of our choosing, and not necessarily to our liking.

In effect, that is the message we learn in Sukkot. That life can rattle us, bring upon us great joys and great pain, but that we're still enveloped in a protective, albeit seemingly frail shelter. The famed question about what the sukkah is reminiscent of is answered in one of two ways, one, the huts our ancestors knew in the desert, and secondly, the clouds that protected us above. It would seem that the two coincide on a philosophical plane. To feel comfort, one needs basic protection, but the greater sense of feeling inoculated from life's treacherous pitfalls, and seemingly inimitable and denervating challenges is the deep-seeded faith that one is protected by the One above. Perhaps Maslow would talk about a hierarchy, a graduated way to attain greater personal fruition, but Judaism doesn't see it that way. Life itself lacks meaning without either material or spiritual substance, and furthermore, the two are synchronous and need to be achieved simultaneously.

Perhaps that was the message implicit in Moshe speaking to the rock at Mei Meriva, the drastic turn of fate that would keep him from entering the land. The person, in contrast to animals, is referred to in Jewish thought as the medaber. Animals have physical prowess that often outmatches our own. Hitting the rock that was to bring water and satiate our thirst, would have been animalistic in nature and by design. Hashem, it would seem, was asking Moshe to serve as a paradigm for how to address Him at times of sorrow and difficulty in the promised land. With the indispensability of working the land – and relying on their own bodily efforts – the Jews would need to couple it with prayer, looking heavenward for support. The desert was an oasis of sorts; man didn't need to beckon God but rather the opposite was true. In the new land, a land "whose rocks are iron (Devarim 8:9) Jews would need to have the mettle to fend with the natural forces, the rocks, the soil, the rain patterns etc. but more importantly, they needed to step out of the embryonic existence of dependency, and realized that with heavenly support from above, they could conquer their enemies and till the land below.

In a sense, without a reliance on ourselves, and acceptance of ourselves, something that the Book of Yonah teaches us, we wouldn't have the gumption to face the elements, the most elemental being the fusion of human drive and will with Hashem's providence from above.