Sukkos: Keeping Our Aravos Near

I was on a חול המועד trip at Top Golf today, and one of the workers came up to me and nicely wished me a “happy holiday”. But before I could respond he corrected himself - “Wait, this is one of the happy ones, right? I can wish you that? I know you guys aren’t eating until sundown so I wasn’t sure”.

And while his Jewish holiday trivia was a bit inconsistent, this Top Golf employee’s attitude was “on the ball”, if I may (pun extremely intended). I’ll explain.

Over the first days of yuntif I heard a drasha by Rabbi Elliot Schrier, in which he explained the hashkafic underpinnings of the ברכת יעקב’s שיטה on לולבים for lefties. In short, there’s a machlokes between the משנה ברורה and the ברכת יעקב about, within the שיטה that a lefty should hold his לולב in his left hand and his אתרוג in his right, in which order should the הדסים and ערבות go. The משנה ברורה, which is the majority, standard opinion, says that it should be the same as with righties: הדסים on the right of the לולב, and ערבות on the left. The ברכת יעקב, however, says that lefties should flip them: הדסים on the left, ערבות on the right. And he gives a few technical reasons why that should be the case, and then gives one more explanation: because the ערבות should go next to the אתרוג. And he leaves that reason there, with no further explanation. And the obvious question is why. Why should the ערבות be next to the אתרוג? Of course that’s how it is for righties, but that’s just incidental, because the לולב goes on the right because it has 3 מצוה items, while the אתרוג, which has 1, goes on the left, and the הדסים are more numerous and smell better than the ערבות, so the הדסים go to the right of the לולב, while the ערבות on the left, incidentally leaving the ערבות on the left side of the righty’s right hand, and the אתרוג directly next to it in the righty’s left hand. But why should that be a reason for the lefty, holding the לולב in his left hand, to flip his הדסים and ערבות to make the ערבות adjacent to the אתרוג in his right hand?

Rabbi Schrier explained that, as we know, the אתרוג represents the best of Jews, as it smells nice and has a taste, representing those with knowledge of תורה and performance of מצוות, and the ערבות represent the apparent worst of Jews, those with no smell and no taste, those devoid of both תורה and מצוות. And on סוכות, more than any other holiday, we, the אתרוגים, those who are עוסק בתורה ובמצוות, have the responsibility to bring close the ערבות of our brethren.

It was a beautiful drasha, an astute point, and an excellent hashkafic and practical imperative for people to invite their unaffiliated neighbors into their sukkahs for a meal, or even just to say hello and to schmooze.

But for the average recently-graduated, possibly still in kollel, Washington Heights-bound 24 year old new balabus who doesn’t even own his own סוכה, how does this apply to us? I personally am not really friends with my heights neighbors, but even if I were, I’m staying by my parents and in-laws in Teaneck for סוכות, and have no place inviting their neighbors into their sukkahs. And I imagine many of you are in the same situation. So what’s our takeaway?

Perhaps relevance to us can come through re-interpreting the מדרש. Classically, the אתרוג is the Jew with תורה and מצוות, the לולב is a different Jew with תורה but no מצוות, and similarly the הדסים and ערבות. But people aren’t stagnant. Sometimes one who is usually an אתרוג can have a bad day, week, or zman in which he doesn’t learn so much תורה, and he is temporarily a הדס Jew. And when a secular Jew decides to listen to a few words of תורה then he becomes a לולב, if only momentarily. We all have our moments when we’re up and when we’re down, when we’re אתרוגים and when we’re ערבות. But when we are an ערבה, devoid of תורה and מצוות, bumming around, we need to be next to our internal אתרוג. We need to remember that we’re good Jews, אתרוגים, who had a bad hour, day, or week. Not bad Jews.

To tie it back to the Top Golf guy: We have to stop and take a moment to think about what we’re doing on חול המועד, and what kind of day it is. Why did Hashem give us this peculiar time, and what does He expect us to do with it? In concept it’s unusual - a stretch of days which are kind of יום טוב and kind of not, sandwiched between two different ימים טובים which are kind of the same but factually different, and there exists an איסור מלאכה which may be דאורייתא and may be דרבנן, but has so many exceptions that nobody really knows what’s allowed and what’s not (at least I don’t). And in practice it’s even more strange - there’s בגדי שבת with תפילין, there’s the מצוות החג but we drive to shul, and there’s חצי לה’ וחצי לכם, where the חצי לכם is a trip to Top Golf.

Perhaps it can be suggested that Hashem is giving us a unique opportunity to right ourselves, to reorient our direction in this post-yomim noraim world. He gave us an איסור מלאכה so that we can focus on what’s important: לימוד תורה, doing מצוות, spending time with family and rabbeim. But also there are so many built-in heterim because Hashem understands that life is hard, and there’s דבר האבד and there’s צרכי החולה, etc. But this entire framework presents a perfect environment for being an עבד השם. Even the מצוה of סוכה itself works in such a way that it’s so easy to be part of the מצוה. You don’t even need to do anything differently, you just need to do it in a different location, and you’re doing רצון השם. Chol Hamoed is Hashem holding our hands, guiding us down the proper path for the year ahead.

May we all be זוכה to be מקיים רצון השם and feel Hashem’s presence in our lives in a real, tangible way. מועדים לשמחה.