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The Voice of Torah: Succot |
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 A little over six months ago, Rav Simcha Weinberg visited our community and ate a meal at our home. At the table, he asked my children a question to which I did not have a ready answer.
He asked, “In Parshat Vayera, Avraham Avinu interrupted a communion with the Almighty in order to hasten to greet the three travelers who stood a distance outside his tent. From his action, WE know that hachnasat orchim (welcoming guests) is greater than communing with God. But how did Avraham know?”
Thanks to an insight into the holiday of Succot, I believe I can now offer an answer to Rav Simcha’s question.
There is a strong link between the succah and our matriarch, Sarah. Sarah has another name, Yiscah, mentioned in Bereshit 11:29:
…The name of Nachor’s wife was Milcah, the daughter of Haran who was the father of Milcah and Yiscah.
This was Sarah – Rashi.
In addition to the fact that the name Yiscah contains the root word “succah”, the two reasons given for why she had this name are directly related to the succah structure and holiday.
She was called Yiscah from the word socheh (to gaze). One explanation is that she had the ability to gaze and see the future through Divine inspiration. Another is that everyone who saw her would gaze at her mesmerizing beauty.
Both ideas are found in connection with the succah. Beauty is a requirement of the succah, which is required by the law of “noy succah” to be adorned with beautiful wall hangings and decorative sashes. And the mitzvah of drawing water (Sho’eivah) for the special Succot holiday offering of a water libation includes the idea that together with the water, the people would “draw Divine inspiration” (Talmud).
The question is, if Sarah had such a beautiful other name, so profoundly linked to such a holy mitzvah, why is it so totally disregarded? Why do we find no mention of the name Yiscah ever again, and even the one time it does appear, its connection to Sarah is oblique, left only for Rashi to furtively uncover?
It seems to me that Sarah indeed had a rare and sublime gift when it came to connection with the Almighty. She was a prophetess, superior in her prophetic abilities to Avraham in his. She was one whose Divine gaze was enough a part of her essence to have inspired her name. And she so reflected Divinity in her very existence that no one could take their eyes off the otherworldly beauty she radiated.
But then she chose to give it all up.
In marrying Avraham and committing to his life mission, she exchanged the role of communing with and channeling God’s presence (Yiscah) to one of spiritual authority (Sarah, from serarah – dominion), sublimating her prophetic gifts and covering up her vaunted beauty, serving instead in an active leadership role over a worldwide network of devotees, leading them, teaching them, and bringing them closer to God not by mesmerizing them with her divine connection, but by encouraging them in the slow and painstaking development of their own.
Yiscah is placed on long-term hold as Sarah defines her existence and she becomes an active force, guiding and molding her flock, her family, and her household, preparing them for their paths in life. The holiday of Succot becomes the one brief time each year during which we can fleetingly encounter the ethereal connection that Sarah relegated to her ultimate future, the sublime experience of sitting in the presence of the Shechina, basking in pure spiritual pleasure and taking the time to gaze at the beauty of its abode.
With this we can answer Rav Simcha’s question. Where did Avraham know that it was more important to take action to bring others closer to God than to sit and engage in communion with Him? He knew it from his wife Sarah, who chose to give up her own career of basking in Divine radiance in order to command a global and familial effort to bring others to their own recognition of Godliness. Observing the success with which the Almighty blessed her lifetime of effort taught Avraham the truth of this lesson. It was a lesson that he himself cemented only later in life, when he disengaged from God’s presence to go take action and greet the three travelers.
May our succahs be models of both efforts – allowing us both to sit and soak up God’s presence as well as to host guests and guide them toward their own levels of cognition and inspiration.
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