There is a unique arc to the chagei Tishrei. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are days of rarefied spiritual intensity, during which we strengthen our relationship with G-d and recommit ourselves to bettering our relationships with others. Five days later, we build sukkot and live within them for seven days. We move from the heights of G-d’s throne room to the most grounded place possible: temporary dwellings in our backyards. What is the significance of this progression?
To understand this, we begin with the Sefat Emet’s striking explanation of why Sukkot is called zman simchateinu, the time of our joy (Sukkot, 5638). He notes that the verse in Tehillim says, “L’yishrei lev simcha, Joy belongs to the upright of heart (97:11). After Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur purify us of the year’s accumulated transgressions, we become upright-hearted people. Joy then awakens within us on its own, once the obstruction of sinfulness is removed and there is nothing left to block it.
A second teaching of the Sefat Emet expands on this (Sukkot, s.v. simchat beit hasho’eva). Joy itself, he explains, is a kli, a vessel. It is the instrument through which we draw down the spiritual light that was opened during the Yamim Nora’im. Without this vessel, that light remains above, valued by us, but unmanifested in our daily lives. Joy is therefore not only the reward for the experiences of Tishrei. It is the mechanism by which that effort becomes actualized in this world.
This leads us to the symbolism of the sukkah. The Gemara asks why the verse describing the future Beit HaMikdash calls it “the House of the G-d of Ya’akov,” (Yishayahu 2:3) rather than the G-d of Avraham or Yitzchak. It answers that Avraham is associated with the word har, a mountain, as at the Akeidah: “on the mountain, G-d will be seen” (Bereishit 22:14). Yitzchak is associated with sadeh, a field: “Yitzchak went out to converse in the field” (Bereishit 24:63). But Ya’akov called the place where he saw the ladder connecting Heaven and earth a bayit, a house: “and he named the place Beit El” (Bereishit 28:19) (Pesachim 88a).
A mountain is transcendent and majestic, but essentially unreachable. One stands at its foot and gazes upward. A field is the opposite: flat, open, entirely of this earth, with no reaching toward the sky. A house is the synthesis. Its foundation sits on the ground like a field, while its walls and roof rise upward like a mountain.
This is exactly what Ya’akov saw in his dream: a ladder “set on the ground, its head reaching the heavens” (Bereishit 28:12). He then says, “This is verily the House of G-d, and this is the gateway to the Heavens” (Bereishit 28:17). The ladder is both grounded and reaching upward toward G-d. Commenting on this image, the Sefat Emet writes that Ya’akov himself is the ladder, “his body below, and his soul reaching the heavens” (Vayeitzei, s.v. b’pasuk v’hinei sulam mutzav artza). Every one of us is meant to be such a grounded yet reaching being: not a mountaintop that we admire but visit only occasionally, and not a field that never strives upward, but living a life that stands on earth and still reaches toward Heaven.
Rav Kook draws a similar conclusion. Ya’akov’s innovation was turning the pillar he had built at Beit El into a bayit, as the verse says: “and this stone, which I have set as a pillar, shall be G-d’s house” (Bereishit 28:22). A pillar, like a mountain, is something you gather around and admire from outside. A house is something you enter and dwell in. “It is not enough,” Rav Kook writes, “to assemble around the pillar. One is obligated to go inside, into the house, into the inner essence” (Igrot HaRe’iyah, Letter 346).
This is the progression from the Yamim Nora’im to Sukkot. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the mountain and the pillar: the elevated encounter we experience as we stand before G-d in awe. Sukkot is the grounded translation of that experience. We are enjoined not merely to experience holiness as an intense but transient phenomenon, but to bring it into our daily lives. We must take the love of G-d and the refinement of character achieved during the Yamim Nora’im and build a structure with them, one grounded in ordinary life: in our daily tefillot and fulfillment of mitzvot, and in our choices about how we behave in our ongoing encounters with others. And ultimately, as the Sefat Emet reminds us, that is the source of true joy.
Rabbanit Mali Brofsky is a senior faculty member and in-house mental health professional at Michlelet Mevaseret Yerushalayim. She also teaches for the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Hebrew University, and runs a clinical practice in Gush Etzion.