Finding Joy Through the Cracks

All seven days [of the festival] one must make the sukkah a permanent residence and one's house a temporary residence. If rain fell, when is one permitted to leave it? When the porridge becomes spoiled. They made a parable. To what can this be compared? To a slave who comes to fill the cup for his master, and he poured a pitcher over his face.

(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 Eternal your God seven days.

(13) After the ingathering from your threshing floor and your vat, you shall hold the Feast of Booths for seven days. (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 Eternal your God seven days, in the place that the Eternal will choose; for the Eternal your God will bless all your crops and all your undertakings, and you shall have nothing but joy.

(14) They found written in the Teaching that the Eternal had commanded Moses that the Israelites must dwell in booths during the festival of the seventh month, (15) and that they must announce and proclaim throughout all their towns and Jerusalem as follows, “Go out to the mountains and bring leafy branches of olive trees, pine trees, myrtles, palms and [other] leafy trees to make booths, as it is written.” (16) So the people went out and brought them, and made themselves booths on their roofs, in their courtyards, in the courtyards of the House of God, in the square of the Water Gate and in the square of the Ephraim Gate. (17) The whole community that returned from the captivity made booths and dwelt in the booths—the Israelites had not done so from the days of Joshua son of Nun to that day—and there was very great rejoicing.

(18) The children, for example, should be given parched grain, nuts, and sweetmeats; the womenfolk should be presented with pretty clothes and trinkets according to one's means; the menfolk should eat meat and drink wine, for there is no real rejoicing without the use of meat and wine. While eating and drinking, one must feed the stranger, the orphan, the widow, and other poor unfortunates. Anyone, however, who locks the doors of his courtyard and eats and drinks along with his wife and children, without giving anything to eat and drink to the poor and the desperate, does not observe a religious celebration but indulges in the celebration of his stomach. And about such is it stated (Hosea 9:4), "their sacrifices are like the bread of mourners, all who eat it will be contaminated; for their bread is for their own appetites." Such joy is a disgrace for them, as it is stated (Malakhi 2:3), "I will spread dung on your faces, the dung of your festivals."

(9) During the whole seven days [of the festival] one makes his sukkah [his] permanent [dwelling], and his house [a] temporary [dwelling]. If rains fell, starting when is one permitted to clear out [of the sukkah]? When a stiff dish [of food] would be spoiled. They [the elders] illustrate this with a parable: To what can this matter be compared? To a slave who came to pour a goblet for his master, and he [the master] poured a bowl-full [of water] in his face.

(45) All these curses shall befall you ... (47) Because you would not serve the LORD your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything, (48) you shall have to serve—in hunger and thirst, naked and lacking everything—the enemies whom the LORD will let loose against you. He will put an iron yoke upon your neck until He has wiped you out.

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi

״On Sadness and Joy"

This must be made known as a cardinal principle: Just as it is with a victory over a physical opponent - for instance, two people who wrestle with each other, each striving to fell the other, if one of them is lazy and sluggish he will easily be defeated and will fall, even if he be stronger than the other - so it is with the conquest of one's evil nature: it is impossible to conquer the evil nature with laziness and sluggishness, which stem from sadness and a stone-like dullness of the heart, but rather with alacrity, which derives from joy and an open heart that is unblemished by any trace of worry and sadness in the world.

As for the verse, "In every sadness there will be profit" (Proverbs 14:23), which implies that some profit and advantage would be derived from it - on the contrary, the wording implies that, the sadness itself has no virtue, except that "there will be profit" - some profit will ultimately be derived from it. This profit is the true joy in God that follows the genuine sadness over one's sins, with bitterness of soul and a broken heart, which must come at specific, suitable times. For through such sadness, the spirit of impurity and of the sitra achra (i.e. “other side”, forces of evil) is broken, and so too the "iron wall" that separates the person from our Parent in Heaven....

The joy that follows such sadness is of a greater quality, similar to the distinctive quality of light that follows darkness. As the Zohar comments on the verse, "And I saw that wisdom surpasses foolishness as light surpasses darkness" (Ecclesiastes 2:13) [The Zohar (3:47b) asks: Does it take a Solomon to see this? And it answers that the intention of the verse is that just as darkness contributes to light, for we cannot truly appreciate light unless we have experienced darkness, so too does foolishness contribute to the appreciation of wisdom. Similarly in our case, one's earlier sadness adds strength to the joy which follows it, and this is the "profit" of sadness. Sadness itself, however, is a hindrance in one's service of God.