Step Back to Step In | The Sukkos Secret to Happiness | Towson University Hillel

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Alright, well Hakzumeah. As they say in Hebrew, or actually not in Hebrew, in Yiddish, a Gutenmoyd. You know what a Git and Moyed means?

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Guten Holiday.

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Agutin Holiday, yeah. Appreciate you guys for coming here today. It's beautiful to be here in Taoista University. I live about 22 minutes away in Pikesville. And I could say with full honesty, I've never been here, even though it feels like it should be in a backyard, but it's a beautiful place and a beautiful sukkah within this beautiful place. You're probably already noticing the sukkah is in a it's completely under the sky. It's under the under the heaven. There's actually a halakha, there's a law. Oh my gosh, there's like robots moving.

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Is that a thing? Yeah.

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Why is that a thing? What is that? I'll take I'll take uh uh a laka? Oh wow, do they talk?

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Do they call you home sometimes?

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Do they really? I could imagine at night. That's probably one of the scariest things too. Oh my gosh. Wow. Wow, okay. I was not expecting that. Wow. What they've upgraded the robots is like oh wow, wow.

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Now they have faces.

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Wow. Oh that's nice. I didn't notice. I noticed a smiley face or wow. Wow. Okay. If anyone's familiar with um the great Hasidic master Rabbi Nachmin, you ever heard of him? Yeah, Rabbi Nachmin of Breslev. So it's quite significant to talk about him a little bit on the holiday of Sukkis, in particular because he passed away. His yard site, the Yom Hilulo, we'd call it, was yesterday on the 18th of whatever month we're in, Tishra. And it's very interesting. Rabbi Nachmin brought to the world a whole bunch of teachings. Maybe you've heard Ain's Shim Yush, right? You've heard of that concept that there's no such thing as despair. Um that was one idea he taught. Another idea he taught was the idea of always living Bismcha with joy. And obviously, sukkis is the holiday of joy. So it's quite ironic, or maybe not ironic, and not coincidental if somebody believes in that there is a God. By the way, that's one of the reasons why we don't have anything else above. We have a straight shoot, straight direct to Hashem. There's no trees. If you're under a tree, it's actually not kosher in terms of being in a sukkah. You have to be right under the sky. There's actually a halacha. You have to be able to see the stars at night. And there's something significant significant about that. Avram Avinu. Wait, there's a bunny too? What is going on here? There's robots, there's bunnies. Well, he always eats in the sukkah all year round?

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I bring him, I've been bringing him a bringing away.

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What's his name?

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Ray Ray.

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Ray Ray, okay. Hi everybody.

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You look like my father, the way you're talking about.

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Oh, hi. Hi, Ray. Yeah, my uh mother actually, she has a bunny too. Actually, it died. Yeah, sorry to bring a sad moment in the. No, she has another one. No, sorry. There was one that died. Blueberry. Allah Shalom. He's buried in the backyard, along with some other animals that passed in, passed away over the years. Growing up, we actually wanted a dog, but my parents didn't want a dog, so we got a what was called a sing I dog, which is actually, I wasn't planning to say this, but it's actually kind of relevant. Um Sing Eye Dog is a is a it's like a whole community. It's a program that you could raise a dog to serve a blind person. And it's very altruistic. You know, you have to, my sister was the main, um, like she was the main trainer at the time, but you have to read through this like a thousand-page manual, and everything has to very be very deliberate and what you can do, what you can't do, and you basically train it for a year. So it's a good compromise that we, as kids, we were able to get a dog for a year. Um happens to be the dog Pandora was her name. She was a gold uh Labrador retriever, a beautiful dog, and she was trained so well, primarily by my sister and mother, that she didn't even end up going to serve a blind person. They put her into the breeding program because they wanted more of her type, her DNA. Um and they and then she had a whole litter, it was an O litter. My name is Ori, and they named one of the, so that all the dogs were named O something. So they named one, my last name is Strom, they named one O Strum. That happened to be the one dog in the entire litter that was the dumbest dog. It was the only dog that didn't make it like past whatever round, and so I think I think they give it away to I don't know who up. But it couldn't go to like a rescue dog or what have you. So interesting time I sing sing ice for the blind. Sing and blind, like it's very connected to sukkhis. The word sukkha, not everybody, not everybody knows this, but if you look in the speaking about etymology, we were talking before, um, if you look in the etymological dictionary from Rev Hersh, Rev Hersh was a mastermind in terms of looking at words and seeing the Sharushim, the root words. So, what does the word sukkah mean? People could translate as a, you know, uh as wall, as a wall structure, as a hut, as a booth, but there's a there's an actual there's an actual meaning behind what sukkah means. Does anybody want to take a guess? The word sukkah in Hebrew. Okay, that's a beautiful idea. I like that. The actual root word sukkah sin. Samachas. Samacha, I can spell it. It means to see. Um one of the matriarchs, Sara, she had a nickname Yuska, and that was the ability to see, vision. Somehow sukka is related to vision. Sometimes a person is stuck in something, and they're in something, they're in a situation, they're in a house, they're in a relationship, they're in a whatever it is, and because of the constant involvement in that thing, they lose focus and they they forget to see it. I'll tell you a funny story. About a week, about a month ago, I have I have um a couple girls at home, and we like going to the library. So the JCC in Pikesville, they opened up a library, a Jewish library, and they like weed out, you know, there's they have Jewish books, but they also have like non-Jewish books, but they like kind of filter them out, you know, because Arthur can be dangerous. So they filter them out, you know, the ones that don't say certain words or concepts in there. Anyway, so we got a book, a whole bunch of books, and of course, like a good, you know, Jewish family, we waited till literally the last minute to be able to return. You have a month to be able to return the books. Um, we waited till 2.58 on a Sunday, and the library closed at 3. We got there at 2.59, and we returned the books, all except for one. The book was called the invisible book. Can you imagine? Can you imagine trying to find an invisible book? Okay, uh, I was telling my wife, like, you gotta be kidding me. Like, the one book, because we were looking at the list of all the books we took out, and the one book that we were missing was called the invisible book. What are the chances? How are we ever gonna find an invisible book? Chicken dip?

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Sure.

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There's also buddy rabbits and robots, but pick your poison. Pick your poison, they're all good. Um, so I'm like, how am I gonna find an invisible book? But obviously, and it's a true story, but it's a little bit of a joke because the fact that we knew that there was a book called Invisible Book that made us realize, okay, that it has to be somewhere. And sometimes the things that we know exist, we forget that they exist, they become invisible to us. And what Sukhis affords us with is the ability to take a step back to step in. You know when we do that? Every time you pray, the Amida, the Shmon Estray, this is what we do. We take three steps back and and three steps forward. When you begin and then when you end, you take three steps back and three steps forward. What is that? What's the idea? Right? Everything we do has a has a purpose, has has a reason. And one of the ideas is that sometimes when you're so in something, you don't see what you're in. There's a is a, I don't know if it's psychological or I think maybe it's uh in in just in the realm of science, there's something called the overview effect.

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Torah anytime.

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And that was the first time that the human beings left this planet. An amazing thing happened, right? Can you imagine living on planet Earth but not knowing what your home looks like? And so there is this USSR cosmonaut. Why they call it a cosmonaut and an astronaut that just happens, it's the same job, but ones in the Soviet Union and one's in America, they have different names. Um, and by the way, not is like nautical, like nautica, like which means like a boat. Um so it's interesting that they're calling these astronauts um like by the name of a boat. There was on the title um the connection with Noach's Teva. It is brought down in certain holy books that the sukkah that we dwell in is actually again, it's likened to the Ark of Noach. And in a world that was filled with so much negativity and promiscuity and um just terrible things that were happening in the world, there was a man and his family, they're like a nucleus that was saved. And they were saved on the ark, on the Teva. And when we go in the sukkah, it affords us a meginah, it affords us protection. And an amazing thing, a question emerges actually, is it's brought down, I think it's in a medresh, that Noah kept the entire Torah. And this was even before the Torah given, and there's answers how to get to that. The question is, how did he keep sukkas? How did he keep sukkas in aboard the the Tanotica, the aboard the Teva? And so I saw a very interesting thing. You know, there was a Tsuhar. That Torah tells us, Tsohar ta'asilateva, you shall make uh uh a window. Or there's two interpretations what that means. It was either an Evan, it was either in either a glowing stone that provided light, or there was an actual window. And so during the daytime, happens to be both were used. During the daytime, they would open the window and light would come in, so you could see inside the ark. And at nighttime, when you didn't have the light from the sun, you would have this shining gem. But what did he do with the sukkah? And so I saw brought down actually that it was in that place, it was in that window that Noah put up Shach in his Teva, and he was able to have a such in the Teva, which is just a fascinating, um, just a fascinating idea. So we're talking about the overview effect. What happened the first time, the guy's name, this Russian cosmonaut, his name was Yuri Gagarion. I'm not sure if he was Ayyid, I'm not sure if he was Jewish or not. I don't think so. But what happened was he was the first person to actually see planet Earth, and he said something amazing, such simple words. He said, the earth is blue. He said a couple different lines, but this was the one that touched me most. He said, the earth is blue. Imagine just that first time leaving Earth and then seeing Earth, the earth is blue. The ability to call something out that always existed, for a person to take three steps back and realize, okay, I don't know if you guys are married yet, probably not, probably not. Um, but a person to take a step back and say, hey, I'm married. Or a person take a step back and say, hey, I have an arm that works. The ability to take three steps back and say, hey, I have a body that functions. The ability to take three steps back and say, hey, I have a family that loves me, or I have a bunny that is delicious, or whatever it is.

unknown 11:45

It's not kosher, right?

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No, no, no. I I I I I don't mean delicious in that way. Trust you. We're not gonna we're not gonna eat eat the bunny. I don't know anyone who eats bunnies actually. Um the ability to take a step back and appreciate what we have. Sometimes things are invisible, but that invisible book, we know it's on the list because I took it out of the library, and so I know it it has to exist somewhere in the home, so I'm gonna go ahead and find it. And this requires us to take three steps back, and then we could have it's the overview effect. That's what Sukis offers us. The ability to have this ability to take a step back. Bill, I think his name is Bill Anders. He was the one credited with the picture called um Earthrise. Earthrise, it's a beautiful picture of Earth. It's the first picture of planet Earth. It was taken behind like the moon, and it's just a chicken dip? Sure. Um and he said something amazing. He said, you know, we left, I might be botching up the line a little bit, but you know, we left Earth to discover the moon and everything else. But ultimately, when we left Earth, we actually ended up discovering Earth itself. And that's something that I think um shouldn't be taken for granted. The ability to take a step back and then realize what it is that we've had all along, whether it's our family, whether it's our friends, whether it's a person's job, whether they're in uh the right class that they're in, the good grades that they got, to take a step back and appreciate all that we have. The chizkuni is a commentary on the Torah. And the Chizkuni says that when we go into a sukkah, it allows us to appreciate our bias, our home. And that begs the question I don't understand. The sukkah is all about dwelling in the sukkah. We actually leave the home, right? So why is the chhzkuni saying, oh, we get to now appreciate and see the home? And the answer, I believe, is exactly what we're saying. It's called the overview effect. It's called the Amidah, it's called taking three steps back. Sometimes you only see the bias, you only see the house when you leave the house. Like the Gemara, the Talmud in Sukkha 2a says, tse medir eskeva. Tsei, that word tse, like maybe you've heard of the word yitsi asmet sarim. Se means to leave. Tsei midir skeva, you leave. Tse is actually the numerical value of 91. Tadek, tzadik is 90, alef is one. Tsadek alef tse is ninety-one, which is the exact numerical value of sukkah. Right? Isn't that interesting? So sukkah, samch, vav, chaf, hei is also exactly 91, the same as tseh, because that's what sukkah does. Sukkah remember is vision. Sometimes the only way you can see something is tse when you take a step back. There's a verse in the Torah, in one of the blessings, it says, Barak attah bivoyecha, ubarak attab it's a sacha. You shall be blessed in your enterings and in your comings and your going ins, and you shall be blessed in your going outs. And the two are meant to be together. In fact, in my in-law's sukkah, we were just there during the first days, and on one side of the sukkah, they have a sign. It says, Barak attah bivoecha, you shall be blessed in your coming ins. And on the other side of the sukkah it says, Barakatah bitsey sech bitse secha, you shall be there's the robot again. Come on, come join us. Um you shall be blessed in your going outs. And the two are actually feeding off of each other. Because sometimes the only way to enter, the only way to actually appreciate, the only way to really see is secha, is to take a step back, is to take those three steps back, is to leave this planet and see Earth and from that picture, like Bill Bill Anders saw it, and see that earth rise, and see it like Yuri Gagarian saw it, and say, hey, the earth is blue. And to understand, to appreciate that, like this answers up the chaskuni. Why are we focusing on the bias? Because sometimes you only see the bias when you leave the bias. I mentioned that just a couple days ago was the yard site of Rabbi Nachman of Breslev. And we mentioned he has a famous teaching of Ansham Yush, you're not let it give up hope. There's no such thing as despair. He has another teaching, he says that um his carvus, the beginning, the way to get close to something is hisrachakus, is distance. When you distance yourself from something, then you can now see it. Now you can now you can appreciate it. Now you can really appreciate it. You know, I was thinking, um there's a story of the Barditcheva Rebbe. Maybe you've heard of the one of the great Hasidic masters. And he woke up one morning, he would dive in in his Stibel, in his shul, and he would say the morning blessings. One of the morning, um and one of the morning blessings was Shal Asani Goi. And what's interesting is that he would woke up one morning, he said the blessings, there's a whole bunch of blessings, and he skipped that blessing. And his students asked him, Well, why did you do that? And he said that that morning he woke up and he was feeling on his level, he was feeling extra low. He was feeling down in the dumps, but then he realized at least I'm a yid. Appreciated the fact that I'm a yid, that I'm a Jew. And that gave him the chizik, that gave him the strength, and right then and there he woke up and said that blessing right there. And that's why he skipped it later on in Shaw. Again, this concept, taking a step back to be able to now go ahead and Torah anytime and step back in. I was thinking, you know, the holiday season is a time where a lot of us go to the supermarket to the store. Maybe you go to the local seven-mile market or whatever. And some people are very on-the-list type of people. I love going off the list. Like I'll come home with, you know, like, I don't know, something random. But you know the brand Tuscanini? Yeah, there's a brand Tuscanini. They they market things so good, right? And it's like, I don't need that extra tomato sauce that's market, that's but it looks so good. So I'll so I'll buy, I'll go way off the list. And what's interesting, I noticed something interesting. When when someone leaves a store often, they're so focused in the store, get pulling things uh off the shelf and putting it in their car. And then you'll notice as they're walking to the car, they have one hand pushing the cart and one hand looking and staring intently, almost like in a like a like a dangerous look at their receipt. Right? So they're pushing a cart, they're looking at the receipt, and the question is you just had a list, you were just in the store. You know exactly what you got. Like, so so why is the person, let's go to the psychology. Why is the person doing this? Does he think that the store gibbed him and he thinks he forgot something? Or or maybe there's something deeper. I think there's something deeper. I think what's happening is that only after you actually leave the store and you're looking at the receipt, and after you leave, you're saying you left Earth, you just you just exited the atmosphere. It's only at that point you're looking and you be like you realize, oh my gosh, look how much I just spent, right? Or truth is, if you're buying food for Shabbos or for holiday, we have a Mysora that it actually doesn't cost. It might look like the money is coming out of your wallet, but if you buy food for Shabbos and Yomtov, it actually doesn't cost anything. And there's one thing to leave actually from this, uh, forget everything I said, is just this. It's an idea of Amuna and Bitachun and Hashem. Um, and this is uh based on uh I believe it's a Gemma, I believe it's a Gemara, that the food that we spend for Shabbos and Yantiv doesn't actually come out of our yearly expenses. Okay, just uh take take it or leave it, or try to just hopefully take it. Um but that's the idea. A person's looking at it, and that now you realize, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, look at look at what I just got. We had that reminder when we when we when we were missing the invisible book, and then we and then we uh thank God found it. I want to share with you um what time do you have?

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Uh 1245.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

1245, okay. Maybe just five more minutes. We mentioned Rabbi Nachman, the teaching of Ain Shem Yush. We mentioned the teaching from Rabbi Nachman about um the ability to get close sometimes requires you to take a step back. I want to share with you another teaching from Rabbi Nachman. You ever play that game with somebody, or you know, maybe a niece or a nephew, or like or you have something, I'm not gonna take out a dirty tissue, but take something small or whatever. I shouldn't take a French ride in my hand. Okay. A clean tissue, thank you so much. Okay. Hey, look, you see what I have? Okay, which hand is it in, right? Okay, I didn't do good. I'm not a magician, but you probably guess it's in okay, okay. It's in this hand, right? So there's this classic magical trick. And we all have an evil inclination. We all have a yita haram. And it's the the little, I don't know, you call him a little devil. He's actually, he looks like a rabbi inside. He says, you know, you just keep doing what you're doing. Sometimes we view him like a big red devil, but sometimes he actually dresses up like a rabbi and he tells you, no, you should do this, you should do that, and you we tell we we often listen to him conscious. So Rabbi Nachman says a beautiful idea. He says that sometimes in life, you know what the Izzah is like, the evil inclination? He's like a person holding his fist closed. And whatever it is that you so desire in your life, it's in there. Whatever, whatever it is that you want to desire, it's in there. It's in that hand, and you're spending, we spend our whole lives, we spend our whole lives caring for bunnies and eating chicken dead, and eating in a suka. Hey, you want to come? Can I hold you?

unknown 21:00

You want to hold he's gonna get pearl.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

It's okay. I I've never held a bunny during a speech. I I'd like to give it a try. No, I only if he's comfortable. It's fine. He's comfortable. That's okay. That's fine.

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He's busy.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Thanks. I thought he wanted to come. He's he's in my space. God, okay. If he goes back. Well, his name Ray. Ray. Okay. I thought that was a different name you said before, no?

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Ray Ray. See, I knew it was different. Ray or Raymond.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

God, okay. Um, how can we change the name though?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Well, I mean Ray Ray is just saying it's a big one.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Oh, God, okay. Oh, okay. The Bonnie has a human name now. Wow. Got it. Okay, so the Rabbi Nachman says it's a beautiful idea. He says, Life is like this, where somebody is holding their hand closed, and you think whatever it is that you want is in their hand. And you spend your whole life chasing it until the end. Thank you very much. Until the end, you catch up, he opens his hand, and guess what? It's empty. There's nothing in it. There. And the end of Sukkis, we're gonna lean from Shloma Malach, he says, Hevel, Havel and Makal Hevel. It's all for naught. Everything is hevel, not everything, but so much of what we thought was real, and so much of what we thought would give us happiness, and so much of what we thought would give us um the ability to be tranquil and be happy is actually just running away from us. It's not like a bunny, but it's like a hamster on a on a on a on a wheel. And when we eventually when we catch up and he opens his hand, it just realized there's there's nothing there. And in that same piece, he says another idea. He says that the rays of the sun sometimes look so thick that you could literally hold it in your hands. But what happens when you actually try to do that? You're grasping, you're grasping nothing. When we dwell in a sukkah, with us out close, when we dwell in a sukkah, there's a halacha that it's not allowed to be mostly sunny. It has to be mostly in shade. Let's say it has to be within the shade. And the idea being, one of the ideas is perhaps like Rabbi Nachman's teaching us, is that so often we see the rays of the sun, we think those things are gonna give us the happiness that we're looking searching for. But what we really need is a reminder, you need the shade. The shade represents protection. The shade represents the things you already have. Chasing things that you don't have is not what gives us happiness. I was just driving to, I wasn't driving, it was on the Yantiv. I was walking to Schulb and I noticed an Amazon truck, an Amazon car, a delivery man, and he had his hazards on. And I was thinking, hazards probably make sense because frequent stops. Um this wasn't one of the Amazon trucks that had a decal on it, or there was no signage, but it was clear Amazon, the guy comes out of the car with um with a vest. And I was thinking maybe the hazards are really for us. Because what we think that what is gonna give us some, you know, there actually is an Amazon um signage called says warning, contents may cause happiness. But it's not true. Because anything that you get, anything that you try to bring in, that's not what causes happiness. Happiness is a result of appreciating what you already have. Happiness is a result of taking those three steps back, of taking that um earthrised picture, of realizing, of seeing the bias sometimes out of the bias, stepping into the sukkah, having the ability to have a vision, to see things that you already have, and realize, okay, this is where the happiness is. So I was thinking maybe the hazards are really a warning for me, the consumer. Hey, you're gonna get this thing. It might be nice, you'll be it'll be great, you might utilize it, but warning, this is not what's going to give you happiness. Happiness is by being in the tsel, it's being in the shade. The sukkha represents a one-handed hug. The minimum size of the sukhah is two is two walls and a tefah. And the Arizal, one of the great Kabbalists, says that this is the minimum for a hug, a one-handed hug from Hashem to us. He's holding us in his arms when we are in a sukkah. That's what's happening. And sometimes it's only in that place when we take it truly take a step back and appreciate all that we have. I wish you all the best. Thank you so much for allowing me to come here. It's a beautiful sukkah and a beautiful place, beautiful bunny, and a beautiful chekindep. And wishing everybody all the best, may we find the joy in the things that we already have and be able to appreciate all everything in our lives. And we should all take a bizoche to a year full of blessings, goodness, and tremendous happiness. Thank you.

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