A central theme of the holiday of Sukkot is one’s obligation to sit in a Sukkah. We are taught that the purpose of sitting in a Sukkah is to commemorate the miracle that God gave us in the desert in the form of the Ananei Ha-Kavod (Read: Clouds of Glory). These magical-type clouds protected us from the surrounding enemies as well as provided us with shelter from all the negative elements associated with living in a desert.
Question: There were so many other miracles that God provided to us in the desert such as the Mann food which fell directly from heaven or the Be’er Shel Miriam, a rock which spewed forth fresh drinking water for the Jewish nation to drink from while in the dessert. So why is it that on the holiday of Sukkot our specific focus is on the clouds that protected us? Wouldn’t food and water, an essential for life be more appropriate to thank God for? To fully understand the answer to this question let us pause for a minute and obtain a deeper understanding as to why we commemorate these special clouds at all. The Clouds of Glory followed and protected the Jewish people from all the negative elements of the desert starting from when the Jewish people left Egypt. Yet following the sin of the golden calf God punished the Jewish people by removing the protecting clouds. Furthermore, following the terrible sin of the golden calf, God was furious with the Jewish people and he pledged to destroy the Jewish nation and pick a different “chosen people”. This was why following the sin of the golden calf Moses went up to heaven for 40 days to beg for God’s forgiveness on behalf of the Jewish people. Following his 40-day successful trip, Moses spoke to the Jewish people and relayed the 3 things he received from God: #1 - The return of the “Luchos” (“The tablets with the 10 commandments”) #2 - A one-word message from God; “Selachti” (Read: “I have forgiven you; I have forgiven you”) regarding the sin of the golden calf #3 - The return of the Clouds I was fortunate to be in attendance at a talk given by Rabbi Eli Mansour and he gave a beautiful answer as to why we specifically celebrate the clouds of glory versus all the other miracles that happened in the dessert. Rabbi Mansour explains that when Moses returned from heaven with the good news that the Jewish people were forgiven for the sin of the golden calf and will not be destroyed that appeared to be more than enough of a successful trip for Moses. Yet God decided to additionally return to us the clouds and we even make a full-fledged holiday over it (over the Maan and the Rock) all to teach us an all-important message about the concept of forgiveness. As Rabbi Mansour so eloquently states; “When God forgives us for our sins, it is such a full and complete forgiveness that it is as if the sin never happened thereby enabling everything to go back exactly to the way it was”. That is why God not only forgave us for the sin of the golden calf with the word Selachti but that was why he also returned to us the clouds as well. There are unfortunate times in all of our life’s where we get wronged by somebody else. Be it in the home, the workplace or the community, people say or do the wrong thing to us and it’s very painful to forgive. We somehow find a way to pick up the pieces and move on yet we can never seem to go back to the way it was. And every time our reaction is the same; “Do you have any idea what he has done to me” or “I mean I guess I sort of forgive him, but we can never go back to being friends again”.
A message of the Sukkot holiday and more specifically the Sukkah itself is to forgive our fellow man in the same way that God has forgiven the Jewish people. Let us emulate God’s example of how to deal with hurt, pain, and betrayal with one word “Selachti - I have forgiven you”. Let us not only superficially forgive our fellow man for all the wrongdoings they have caused us, but to find the emotional strength within ourselves to fully forgive to the point of as if we were never even wronged.
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