Sukkot- זמן שמחתנו

(14) You shall rejoice in your festival, with your son and daughter, your male and female slave, the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow in your communities. (15) You shall hold a festival for the LORD your God seven days, in the place that the LORD will choose; for the LORD your God will bless all your crops and all your undertakings, and you shall have nothing but joy.

(12) Although we are required to rejoice on all festivals, there was special rejoicing in the Temple during the Sukkoth festival, as it is written: "You shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days" (Leviticus 23:40)...

(40) On the first day you shall take the product of hadar trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days.

(1)... They [the Sages] said: Anyone who has never seen the rejoicing at the place of [water] drawing, has never seen rejoicing in all his days.

(1) You shall faithfully observe all the Instruction that I enjoin upon you today, that you may thrive and increase and be able to possess the land that the LORD promised on oath to your fathers. (2) Remember the long way that the LORD your God has made you travel in the wilderness these past forty years, that He might test you by hardships to learn what was in your hearts: whether you would keep His commandments or not. (3) He subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had ever known, in order to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that the LORD decrees. (4) The clothes upon you did not wear out, nor did your feet swell these forty years. (5) Bear in mind that the LORD your God disciplines you just as a man disciplines his son.

(6) Therefore keep the commandments of the LORD your God: walk in His ways and revere Him. (7) For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill; (8) a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; (9) a land where you may eat food without stint, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper.

(10) When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you. (11) Take care lest you forget the LORD your God and fail to keep His commandments, His rules, and His laws, which I enjoin upon you today. (12) When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, (13) and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered,

(14) beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the LORD your God—who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; (15) who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its seraph serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock; (16) who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers had never known, in order to test you by hardships only to benefit you in the end— (17) and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.” (18) Remember that it is the LORD your God who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfillment of the covenant that He made on oath with your fathers, as is still the case. (19) If you do forget the LORD your God and follow other gods to serve them or bow down to them, I warn you this day that you shall certainly perish;

(1) למען ידעו דורותיכם, the plain meaning of the text is in agreement with the view expressed in Sukkah 11 according to which the word סוכה is to be understood literally. The meaning of the verse then would be: “construct for yourselves the festival of huts when you gather in your grain and grape harvest (Deuteronomy 16,13) You are to do this at the time you gather in the produce of the earth and your houses are filled with all the good things the earth produces such a grain, grape, wine and oil (olives). This is to be done in order that you will remember” כי בסוכות הושבתי את בני ישראל, in the desert for a period of 40 years when they neither owned land nor found themselves in a cultivated part of the earth. Remembering all this you will have ample reason to be grateful to the One Who has provided you with all of your present wealth and comfort. You must not fall into the trap of thinking that all this success is due to your own efforts. We find a similar thought expressed in Deuteronomy 8,2-3 “you shall remember all the way which the Lord your G’d has led you for these last 40 years…and He fed you the manna, etc.” Why do I command you to do all this? For the Lord your G’d brings you to a good …and you will eat and be satisfied, etc.

As a result your heart may become haughty and you will credit yourself with all this as your own achievement. (Deuteronomy 8 7-18) In order that this will not happen and to show that the Israelites G’d’s part in their success they will move out of their solid houses as a reminder to the time when they had not been blessed with any of these benefits which they enjoy ever since inheriting the land of their forefathers. They acknowledge that it is G’d Who provides the Jewish people with the ability and valor.