To the faithful soul mates:
Because the time of our celebration is approaching, I hereby point to it.
It is written, “And you will be completely joyful.” The grammar feels as though it should have said, “And you will be glad. But this is what I have explained several times, that the whole difficulty in worshipping Him is that in the worshipper, there are always two opposites in the same subject, that His uniqueness is simple, but must clothe in man’s body, which consists of a body and a soul, which are two opposites.
Therefore, in any spiritual concept that one attains, two opposite forms are immediately created in him—one form on the part of the body, and one form on the part of the soul. By nature, a person cannot scrutinize the body and the soul as two subjects. Rather, he is composed by the Creator as one, meaning as one subject.
It is similar to the tying of Isaac, when the Creator said to Abraham, “for in Isaac shall a seed be called to you,” and the Creator said to him, “and offer him there for a burnt-offering.” From the perspective of the Creator, it is as was written, “I the Lord do not change.” But in the perception of the receiver, they are opposites.
This is why it is written, “And you will be completely joyful,” for “‘but’ and ‘only’ are diminutions,” and the joy of the festival certainly requires wholeness. However, both must be perceived by the receiver as they are for the joy of the festival.
It is also written, “Who is blind but My servant, or deaf as My messenger whom I send?” And it is also written, “The deaf heard, and the blind looked, so as to see.” There are many others likewise, meaning as our sages said, “You, too, prick up your ears,” as though he was never at the court of hearing, the sentence of choice, to find out who is indebted and who is acquitted, for both are the words of the living God. That is, it is written, “I the Lord do not change,” as from His perspective there is but one form here.
This is the meaning of the Mitzva [commandment], “Sit,” as in “dwell,” meaning as King David asked, “that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the pleasantness of the Lord.” The “House of the Lord” is the Holy Divinity, as in “The righteous sit with their crowns on their heads.” When they are granted the most, then You are to him like a home, constant and eternal.
The Creator wished to say to His servants, “Go out of the permanent housing and sit in temporary housing,” meaning only under His shade. This is the meaning of a “light Mitzva,” the Mitzva of the Sukkah [hut], where a person sits under the shade of the waste of barn and winery, which is the actual shade of the Creator. And although they contradict one another—for in corporeal eyes and in corporeal hands we see and feel that the shade comes from the waste, in truth it is the Creator Himself. However, from the perspective of the receiver, it is necessary that those two opposite forms will be depicted in him.
The thing is that before the complex man was created, there was no waste here. But once man was created and the waste and the judgment were felt, the quarrel began in his organs. It is as our sages said, “The hay, the straw, and the chaff are discussing with one another. One says, ‘The field was sown for me,’ and one says, ‘The field was sown for me,’ etc. When it is time for the harvest, everyone knows for whom the field was sown.” All these quarrels and deliberations continued through the terrible days because three books were opened because of them: righteous, wicked, and intermediate.
Once those who were acquitted in the judgment where sorted out and whitened as wheat through the Day of Atonement, and the wicked went promptly to death, as “chaff that is blown away by the wind,” for everyone knows for whom the field was sown, we arrive at the Mitzva, “Go out of the permanent housing and sit in temporary housing.” That is, know that it is only temporary housing, and “the banished one will not be cast out from him.” It is as was said, “Even if the whole world tells you that you are righteous, be wicked in your own eyes.” This is also the meaning of the words, “And you will be completely joyful.”
This is why the festival of harvest [ Sukkot] is called “The time of our joy,” to tell you that one should sit in the shade of a Sukkah in great joy, just as in the king’s house, the kingdom’s most eminent. “Sit” is as “dwell,” without any difference whatsoever.
And yet, he should know that he is sitting in the shade of a Sukkah, meaning the waste of barn and winery. However, “Under His shade I delighted to sit” because he hears His word, “Go out of the permanent housing and sit in temporary housing,” and both are words of the living God. Then his exit delights him as much as his entrance, as it is precisely the abovementioned, “The deaf heard, and the blind looked, so as to see.”
Otherwise there wouldn’t even be a shadow of a Sukkah, for it is not toward us, those who scrape the walls as blind, sitting under the shade of a shade, meaning twofold darkness. It was said about them, “shall inherit locust,” two words [locust is a translation of Tzaltzal=Tzel Tzel (shade, shade)], since their thatch is still fit for reception of Tuma’a [impurity] like one who puts thatch in pegs, which have no Rosh [head], or in broken vessels, where there is still waste because they are still in a state of Tohu and the breaking of the vessels.
By that you will see that one cannot keep the Mitzva of Sukkah before he has been rewarded the degree of unification, HaVaYaH ADNI, which is the meaning of “The sun in her sheath.”
It was also said explicitly regarding the nations of the world: “In the future, when the Creator brings out the sun from its sheath, and each one kicks his Sukkah and leaves, and it crumbles, Israel too?” They explained, “Kick, they do not kick.” It is explained that if a person is not rewarded with a sun in its sheath, he cannot keep the Mitzva of Sukkah altogether. This is the meaning of HaVaYaH ADNI being 91 in Gematria, implying “Go out of the permanent housing.”
This is the meaning of “Stay with me one more day,” as in the small meal of the Atzeret [assembly on the eighth day], meaning that thanks to the complete joy of the festival, as in “Completely joyful”—accepting the two opposites in the same subject and not revoking one before the other—one is rewarded with the eighth day. This is the meaning of “Stay with me one more day,” the day of which it is written, “a day which shall be known as the Lord's, neither day nor night, and it shall come to pass that in the evening there will be light.”
Explanation: A day is the works of the righteous, and a night is the works of the wicked, as it is written in Midrash Rabah regarding “And God said, ‘Let there be light’”: “I still do not know which has the Lord chosen—the works of the righteous or the works of the wicked, when it says, ‘And God called the light ‘day,’’ to teach you that He chose the works of the righteous.”
Therefore, at the end of correction, as in “the banished one will not be cast out from him,” it is written, “a day which shall be known as the Lord's, neither day nor night,” meaning the abovementioned choice. But in the evening, which pertains to the waste of barn and winery, “There will be light,” and all thanks to the delay on the eighth day.
This is why it is called “the festival of the Atzeret,” as though Otzrin [gathering] the oil from the olive, meaning “oil squashing,” which is the essence ... of all the servitude of “only” a day, and it is crushed in a crusher. “Truth shall spring out from the earth,” “And the Lord shall be king over all the earth,” for it will be entirely for the Creator because “only” is part—half permitted and half forbidden, “half of it for you, and half of it for the Lord.” But in the eighth day, the Atzeret, it becomes entirely for the Creator.
Yehuda Leib