Ari Levisohn: Welcome to Into the Verse, the podcast where we dive DEEP into the verses to share new and unexpected insights into the holiday you thought you knew.

You’ve probably heard an explanation or two about the symbolism of the Arba Minim, the four species including the Lulav and Etrog. I know I have, and honestly, none of these explanations have ever really felt convincing to me. Well, last Sukkot we released some really exciting research from Ami Silver, one of the scholars here at Aleph Beta, on the Arba Minim. What set it apart from everything else I have heard was that Ami looked deeply into  the words of the Torah itself when it describes the four species, to try to understand what the Torah wants us to learn from this commandment. The result: The best explanation of the Arba Minim, and really the whole holiday of Sukkot that I have heard to date. And to make it even better, there’s a beautiful animated version of this piece on alephbeta.org. You can find the link in the show notes. 

This episode really resonated with our listeners too, so we decided to share it with you again this year. And we’ll be back soon with some brand-new material for Parshat Bereishit. Now here’s Ami Silver, in conversation with Imu Shalev.

Ami Silver: So Imu, before we dive into any text, I'm going to kind of just ask you some holiday trivia.

Imu Shalev:  Okay.

Ami:  The three festivals, for Pesach (Passover), Shavuot, and Sukkot, there is a special kind of description of what that day is. So for example, Pesach is called zman – 

Imu:  Cheruteinu, time of our freedom.

Ami:  Time of our freedom and liberation. It totally makes sense for Pesach to be zman cheruteinu. What's Shavuot called in the festival prayers, do you remember? Zman – 

Imu:  Zman matan Torateinu. Shavuot, the holiday of Torah giving. Totally makes sense.  Pesach, freedom day. Shavuot, Torah day. And Sukkot is – this is where you're going, right?

Ami:  Sukkot is zman – 

Imu:  It's zman simchateinu.

Ami:  Zman simchateinu.  The time of our – 

Imu:  Our happiness.

The Time of Our Happiness

Ami:  Now why is that? With Pesach and Shavuot, not only did they make sense, but it's the essential identity of that holiday. The whole holiday of Pesach is about celebrating the liberation from Egypt. The whole holiday of Shavuot, is dedicated to celebrating the day of – that the Torah is given. And Sukkot, it's the time of our happiness.  Well, maybe the rabbis didn't have a good thing to call Sukkot, so they gave it a generic thing – simchateinu, it's a holiday, it's a joyous time. But you know, I don't buy that. Sukkot actually has quite a lot of particularity about it as a holiday. 

Now, what's interesting is that if we look in the Torah's description of Sukkot, we actually do find an element of joy in it. What is the joy associated with Sukkot? Why might Sukkot be this particular time of joy? I think, actually, the kind of joy that we encounter there, or the quality of that joy, has the potential to raise some really interesting directions for us here.

I want us to start by looking at actually the first place that the holiday of Sukkot appears in the Torah. This is in Vayikra, in the book of Leviticus, chapter 23, where we get introduced to a lot of the holidays for the first time. It says the following (Leviticus 23:39-40):

אַךְ בַּחֲמִשָּׁה עָשָׂר יוֹם לַחֹדֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִי – But on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, 

בְּאָסְפְּכֶם אֶת-תְּבוּאַת הָאָרֶץ תָּחֹגּוּ אֶת-חַג-יקוה שִׁבְעַת יָמִים – when you gather the harvest of the land, you will celebrate God's holiday for seven days. 

בַּיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן שַׁבָּתוֹן וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי שַׁבָּתוֹן – The first day will be a shabbaton, a kind of festival observance day, and the eighth day will be shabbaton, a festival observance day.

So this is the first thing we hear about what's happening on this holiday. It's the holiday that's happening when you're gathering your harvest, and you're celebrating for seven days. Let's go to the next verse.

וּלְקַחְתֶּם לָכֶם בַּיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן – And on the first day, you will take for yourselves: פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר – a fruit from an etz hadar. The word hadar – what do you make of that word?

Imu:  Pretty.  It's a pretty tree, a beautiful tree.  

Ami:  A fruit from a beautiful tree, כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים – palm fronds, וַעֲנַף עֵץ-עָבֹת – and a branch of an etz avot (avot means thick), וְעַרְבֵי-נָחַל – and river willows. וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם לִפְנֵי יקוה אֱלֹקיכֶם שִׁבְעַת יָמִים – and you shall rejoice before Hashem your God, seven days.

Imu:  There's that word simchah (joy).

Ami:  There's that word simchah, right. And the next verses explain that it's because we sat in these sukkot (booths) when we left Egypt, and we will remember that for all time. So this is the descriptor about the holiday of Sukkot. Where’s the joy on Sukkot? What's the joy about on Sukkot?

Imu:  It's unclear what you're "joying." But the simchah part, if you're asking me to pay attention to the rejoicing, it seems to come in the middle of this list of laws, right? It's telling you: “Hey, on the fifteenth, you've got to keep this holiday, Sukkot. You've got to grab a bunch of weird plants.” And then you could read it in two ways. You can say: “Grab a bunch of weird plants.” Period. “Also, you should be really happy on this holiday.” 

Or a way of reading it that I think would be appropriate would be: Somehow, one of the laws of Sukkot is to gather these weird plants, and through these weird plants – I'm calling them weird just because I think that the idea of this is kind of funny, but take these plants and be happy with God. Somehow the plants are a vehicle for being happy before God.

How Do the Arba Minim Help Us Rejoice? 

Ami:  Right. And you're talking about – I think you said “gather the weird plants,” but the funny thing here is that actually, in the previous verse, there's actually a lot of plant gathering happening, בְּאָסְפְּכֶם אֶת-תְּבוּאַת הָאָרֶץ (when you gather the harvest of the land). 

Imu:  You're totally right.

Ami:  We're in an agrarian society. This is harvest festival. This is a big deal.

Imu:  That actually makes far more sense. It's the Jewish version of Thanksgiving. “Everybody, get all of the last harvests. Take the gourds and the pumpkins and your bounty and your cornucopia and have a major feast, a celebration, happiness.” But that's not where the happiness commandment actually comes in.

Ami:  Right, and that's the thing. If you were writing this, then you should make an edit here. You should take out that phrase וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם לִפְנֵי יקוה – rejoicing before God, and you should put it up at the end of the previous verse. It should be: “When you gather all the crops of the year, gather them in at this time of year and rejoice before God for seven days with all of your bounty.” 

But here we have this very strange thing. Gather in all your harvest at this time of year, period. Go take for yourself this fruit, from this tree. These palm fronds, some branch, make sure it's thick, and then river willows. Oh, and then… וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם! And when you do that, wow, are you going to be happy!

Imu:  It's actually funny. If I were to show up to my mom's Thanksgiving, and everyone pot-luck – you know, my sister brought the yams with the delicious marshmallows on top, and another brother brings some potatoes, and I bring the thick branch and the river willows… like, “The joy is here, everybody!”

Ami:  The party doesn't start until Imu comes with those branches in his hands.

Imu:  River willows, exactly.

Ami:  Then everyone is just going to get up and dance for seven days straight. They would just be so gripped with ecstasy!

So granted, this is weird. Associating rejoicing before God with what we call the four species, the arba minim, seems out of place. And if we even just take a step back, it really is a very weird part of this holiday, anyway. You know, if someone were to ask you, stop you walking down the street with your arba minim and say, “Hey, what are you holding in your hand? What is that?” – what would you even say to them?

Imu:  This is my ritual bouquet. 

Ami:  Right. My ritual bouquet. “Oh. And what do you do with it?” We shake it. “Why these plants?” I don't know. But you know what? The Torah is telling us these plants somehow are connected with some kind of joy.

Imu:  I think what you're getting at is such an elementary, basic question, that I think I'm almost afraid to go there. I'm almost afraid to ask. Right? Because it's such a good question, you better have a really good answer for me. Because I think many people have waxed poetic on what is the meaning behind the arba minim, that no one really expects a very good answer.

Ami:  Well, I'd say that a lot of the explanations that are given tend to be very, almost metaphorical. “It's the four kinds of Jews. It's the four letters of God's name. It's four parts of the body.”

Imu:  That's not a very common explanation we give to our mitzvot in general. It is somewhat rare, I think, in Jewish practice, to have very esoteric, spiritual answers. Not that they're invalid. It's just, if you're looking for a rooted, concrete, p'shat-driven [based on the surface meaning] answer, it's a great question. I don't know.

Ami:  Because the Torah's very insistent and specific. The Torah is like: “This kind of fruit, these kind of plant parts. This is what you get.” And it doesn't tell us why. So, what are the arba minim (four species)? What is this mitzvah? And what does it have to do with simchah, with joy? 

I actually want to zero in with you on the pasuk (verse) about the arba minim, the description of the four species. It seems to be quite random and coming out of nowhere: “Take this fruit. Take that thing. Do these things.” I want to start with really asking ourselves a question: When we read these words carefully, is this really coming out of nowhere? Is this really existing in a vacuum, this mitzvah? Do these words evoke anything for us when we hear them and listen to them sensitively?

Imu:  Cool.

Ami:  So let's start with the beginning of that verse again: וּלְקַחְתֶּם לָכֶם בַּיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר. The basic mitzvah here: Take for yourself a fruit from a tree. Think about those words – וּלְקַחְתֶּם לָכֶם פְּרִי עֵץ – specifically with the phrase of לקח – to take. Taking a fruit from a tree. Does that phrase, that idea, remind you of anything? 

Into the Garden

Imu: Maybe the first taking from a fruit is Chavah, is Eve taking from the Tree of Knowledge. Is that right?

Ami:  Exactly, and if we turn to Genesis chapter 3 verse 6, let's just look at what it says. וַתֵּרֶא הָאִשָּׁה – the woman, this is Eve, saw כִּי טוֹב הָעֵץ לְמַאֲכָל וְכִי תַאֲוָה-הוּא לָעֵינַיִם – that it's good for eating, it's desirous for the eyes, וְנֶחְמָד הָעֵץ לְהַשְׂכִּיל – it is… 

Imu:  Pleasant to contemplate.

Ami:  Now look at this phrase: וַתִּקַּח מִפִּרְיוֹ וַתֹּאכַל – and she took from its fruit and she ate it. So in fact, the first “taking” of a fruit is happening here when Eve took the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

Imu:  Interesting.

Ami:  Now you might say: Okay, whatever, taking a fruit, that's how you get fruit off of trees! Maybe it's not so wild or interesting that when we have a mitzvah having to do with fruits, we're obviously told to take it, because how else do you get a fruit off a tree? But let me ask you something. Looking at this verse in Genesis, what was it about this tree, this fruit, that made Eve want to take it?

Imu:  It seems like three things.  She saw, וַתֵּרֶא הָאִשָּׁה כִּי טוֹב – it was good, good to eat. תַאֲוָה-הוּא לָעֵינַיִם – it was a desire for the eyes. So maybe it was hadar, maybe it was beautiful.

Ami:  It seems like something about the way it looked, that she couldn't take her eyes off of it and she couldn't keep herself away from it. But isn't it interesting, now, that when we come back to Parshat Emor: וּלְקַחְתֶּם – and you shall take, פְּרִי עֵץ – not just any fruit from any tree, but פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר – the fruit from the tree that's beautiful. The beauty of it is actually its only identifying feature here. That seems to be exactly what was going on back there in the Garden.

Imu:  Fascinating.  

Ami: And I don't want us to stop there, okay? וּלְקַחְתֶּם פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר – you take the fruit and you take all of these other things, and what did we say happens?

Imu:  וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם.

Ami:  וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם לִפְנֵי יקוה אֱלֹקיכֶם – You rejoice before Hashem your God. What happened after Eve took from that fruit, from that tree, and she and Adam ate it? What happened after that?

Fruits Will Bring Sadness

Imu:  Interesting, I think I see where you're going. Almost the exact opposite of happy. The polar opposite of happy is sad. So one of the curses that God gives woman is etzev, is sadness. 

Ami:  הַרְבָּה אַרְבֶּה עִצְּבוֹנֵךְ וְהֵרֹנֵךְ בְּעֶצֶב תֵּלְדִי בָנִים – Some kind of sadness that's going to be involved in pregnancy and childbearing (Genesis 3:16). By the way, it's not only to the woman, but in the next verse –

Imu: Yeah, man also gets it.

Ami: God turns to Adam and says: Because you did this, אֲרוּרָה הָאֲדָמָה בַּעֲבוּרֶךָ – the earth will be cursed on your behalf. בְּעִצָּבוֹן תֹּאכְלֶנָּה כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ – You're going to experience sadness in eating produce of the earth. So the consequence of this “taking” from this beautiful tree was that both of them would experience forms of sadness.

Imu:  Sadness in the realm of fruit, right? So inasmuch as women bear fruit, we even say pru u'revu, it's the same word as pri, pru, that you should be fruitful and multiply. And man's toil, his sadness, is going to come from his labor in the fruit of the earth.

Ami:  Reaping fruits is going to be sad.

Imu:  So that makes me think that on this Sukkot holiday, this harvest holiday where the harvest is finishing up, somehow re-confronting this sin which brought us great sadness in our fruits is going to bring us great, great joy and happiness. This is really cool, Ami. What else do you have for me?

Ami:  It does seem like something’s going on there, right? I've got one more thing for you. When we look at Sukkot, where is this joy taking place? וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם לִפְנֵי יקוה אֱלֹקיכֶם – very literally before the face of God. Let's go back a little bit, closer to the Tree of Knowledge. Adam and Eve ate from the fruit. God comes out. They hear God's voice walking in the Garden, and what do they do (Genesis 3:8)? וַיִּתְחַבֵּא הָאָדָם וְאִשְׁתּוֹ מִפְּנֵי יקוה אֱלֹקים.

Imu: Oh my gosh.

Ami: Adam and his wife hide מִפְּנֵי – from the face of, יקוה אֱלֹקים – that same double form of God's name. On Sukkot you take the fruit, you do the four species, you have joy לִפְנֵי יקוה אֱלֹקיכֶם – before the face of God. At the Tree of Knowledge, they took and ate from that tree and then they hid מִפְּנֵי – from the face of, יקוה אֱלֹקים – Hashem their God. We're seeing two instances of taking fruit from a beautiful tree, or a beautiful fruit, and look at where it leads. In the Garden it leads to sadness and to hiding from God, and in Leviticus, in Sukkot, it leads to joy before God, in God's presence.

Imu:  But no eating.

Ami:  Right. We see all these things that seem to be shared elements, and what you're noticing here is a key difference. A key difference is what is done with the fruit. In the Garden it was eaten, it was eaten illicitly, and that was the cause of the breakdown afterwards. On Sukkot, it's commanded to take it, and there's no mention of eating, and we're obviously not eating it, and we're rejoicing with it. Now, there's actually one other key difference between these two instances, in terms of not only what you do with the thing that you take, but on Sukkot, what are you in fact taking? You're not just taking a fruit, right?

Imu:  Right, you're taking some other vegetation. 

Ami:  You're taking a bunch of other things. It really makes me wonder: Does that have something to do with the element of joy before God, rather than a kind of sadness in hiding from God? Here's where the stories diverge. Take but don't eat, and take it together with these three other things. Can those be the elements that actually make it a very different experience?

Imu:  So it's fascinating, because as I'm listening to you I'm like, “This is all really intriguing, but Ami is avoiding this כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים וַעֲנַף עֵץ-עָבֹת וְעַרְבֵי-נָחַל.”

Ami:  Which would be convenient, right? Because what in the world is it?

Imu:  Right. And I was thinking, כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים – were there כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים in Eden? עֲנַף עֵץ-עָבֹת in Eden? Where is he going with this? But now you're specifically saying those elements, the lulav, the hadassim and aravot, or as the Torah calls them, the כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים, the עֲנַף עֵץ-עָבֹת, the עַרְבֵי-נָחַל – those three are new. They somehow, maybe, are part of the distinctions from the Eden experience, right? There was eating in Eden; no eating here. There was sadness in Eden; there will be joy here. And there's a bunch of new other elements that get taken with this fruit. 

Ami:  Somehow this is, “Just take these things and… וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם!” As if you will almost automatically just be filled with happiness and joy on Sukkot. Like, why? Holding these things? Is it possible that if we can try to understand a little more what these four species really are about, we might understand how they hold a kind of secret to joy?

The Elements of a Plant

So come back with me to Vayikra 23, and let's look again at this verse. What I want you to do as we read this is, I want us to kind of encounter each of these plants, each of the four species, as if we've never encountered it before. The Torah is telling us about different elements of the plant world. That's what I want us to kind of focus on here. So number one is pretty simple. וּלְקַחְתֶּם לָכֶם – the first thing you take, פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר. What part of a tree are you taking here, Imu?

Imu:  The fruit. 

Ami:  Pretty simple, right? The first of the four species, the first element of this mitzvah: Take a fruit. The next one, כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים. Now, what are כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים?

Imu:  That's fascinating. So כַּפֹּת are palm fronds; they're the leaves of a tree. 

Ami:  I love that you identified it as a leaf, because if you asked somebody what a lulav is, they wouldn't think a lulav is a leaf, but it really is. A lulav, you know, I live here in Jerusalem, there are palm trees out in my courtyard here. At the top of a palm tree, when you have a new leaf growing out, what we call a frond, before it opens up into that kind of canopy and hangs off the side, it just stands up as a lulav, as a thick, closed spear, so to speak. If you let it grow, the individual slats on the lulav, they open up and they are the leaves of the palm tree. So when the Torah is telling us כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים it's saying: Take a leaf. Let's continue on to the next step, וַעֲנַף עֵץ-עָבֹת. What did we say this translates to, just in a very simple way?

Imu:  The branch of a very thick tree. Oh, interesting. So we went from fruit – okay, from fruit to leaf to branch.

Ami:  We seem to be taking different elements of the tree as the different elements of this mitzvah.

Imu:  And getting further from the fruit.

Ami:  You move from the fruit and you find the leaf, and then, oh, but don't stop at the leaf, go take a branch. Imu, what's the next thing we do in this mitzvah? וְעַרְבֵי-נָחַל. What is the unique characteristic of this type of plant?

Imu:  The willow tree? Maybe that it grows from rivers?

Ami: The specificity of this part of the mitzvah is that it's a thing that grows on water. עַרְבֵי-נָחַל is the plants that are growing up from the water.

Imu:  So you see this as a progression where we got the fruits, we got the leaves, we got branches, and in some sense we even got trunks. The branch is a stand-in for the tree itself, right, because it's the – 

Ami:  It's something woody. 

Imu:  וְעַרְבֵי-נָחַל – and now you've gone even further to the source of the tree, which is water.

Ami:  So let's just think for a moment, what it might mean to hold this in my hands as a mitzvah. I'm holding a fruit. What comes before the fruit? There's a leaf. Oh, and then I took a leaf, and if I keep going into the process, I'm going to find a branch, I'm going to find the body of a tree. But where does a tree come from? The source of that tree is water. When I'm holding these four different kinds of parts of plant life in my hands, I'm holding the whole process of plant life, together, from water to fruit.

Imu:  It's actually a product and source with all of its in-betweens.

Ami:  It's telling you the whole story. And let me ask you something. We’re noticing here that it seems like each element of the four species is kind of a further step toward the source of where these things come from. What's the source of the water, Imu? Look at what comes next in the pasuk (verse). I'm just going to read the pasuk now, keeping in mind the progression we've just uncovered. Take for yourselves:  פְּרִי עֵץ הָדָר – the fruit of this tree; כַּפֹּת תְּמָרִים – the leaves; וַעֲנַף עֵץ-עָבֹת – the branch; וְעַרְבֵי-נָחַל – the willows on the river. וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם – and rejoice לִפְנֵי יקוה אֱלֹקיכֶם.

Imu:  Right there. You go straight to the source.

Ami:  You go straight to the source. It almost reads: You will be rejoicing, you'll be in God's presence. You're going to meet the Creator. If you follow this process back to its source of its source, you're going to be right there in God's presence, rejoicing.

Imu:  Beautiful. You know, I'm smiling as you teach me this. Experiencing a fruit and where it comes from and seeing its source, and then taking that source all the way to God… it reminds me of just, you know, I found it to be a very spiritual experience to take my kids to a farm, or to pick fruits, because especially in modern times, when our fruits essentially grow in the supermarket, It almost feels artificial, weirdly, to see a pumpkin on the vine, or to see a peach on a tree, and be like: “Oh, like in those commercials!”

Ami:  That’s an intense reality of disconnect from the source. We don't know, we don't identify things from their source. We get them after the fact.

Connecting to the Source

Imu:  And there's intense joy, there's something thrilling and exciting. If you ever grow vegetables in your backyard, it's almost hilarious that the earth gives you fruit. It just gives you fruit. It gives you, like, candy. So to bundle that experience together and to really just meditate on it or just be moved by it – maybe that's why I haven't had this experience in my ritual Judaism up until now, is I didn't really know what I was doing – but to stare at those four things in your hands, four things that kind of tell you the source of your bounty and connect you as far back as we can, back to water, back to God – there's great joy in that.

Ami:  And this is part of what's beautiful about the process here in this mitzvah. It doesn't say, think about these things. You're literally holding them in your hands. As much as possible, you're fully sensing each of these stages of the creative process.

You brought up a good question. Is וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם sort of, “then you shall do the happy thing”? Or is וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם a natural outgrowth of what happens when you hold these four species? I can imagine that if I'm holding this with the awareness that I'm encountering, very directly and viscerally, this very fundamental creative energy that runs through creation – and I'm holding it in my hands and in a sense, I have no choice but to encounter the Source of all of this, when I kind of take stock of it. Then it kind of brings up the question, which is: This is called joy, this experience. It's called simchah. What is the cause of that simchah? What kind of simchah is that, exactly? 

So I want to go back to what we first started with, because when we read the descriptions of Sukkot and it's saying “gather in your crops,” it's a harvest festival. We're thinking to ourselves, that would make sense to us for it to be a time of simchah, because yeah, you've got all this great fruit. But the Torah sort of throws a curveball here: Then go outside. Take this, take that, take that, take that, and find your joy here. What is that joy? You know, it made you smile. What is that? What are we sensing when we're kind of recognizing this process up close and recognizing God as the source of it?

God’s Gift of Fruit

Imu:  The word that's coming to mind is matanah, is “gift.” It seems like the Torah is telling you to go beyond mere enjoyment of the harvest. The harvest was hard work, I imagine. You're disconnecting the fruit from its source. So when the ritual asks you to go beyond merely bringing the bounty back to the table and eating it – it tells you, Remember where this came from – it seems to be that a source of the joy is that this was given to you, that this is a gift. I don't think in the “I'm scolding you” kind of way of, like, “Remember where this came from! You never would have done this without Me!” – but in that same hilarious notion that if you have a garden, it gives you blueberries. 

In some sense, maybe, in the basic metaphor of the Garden of Eden, at one point in human history, life was a garden and you could eat from all the fruits. You could just pick to your heart's content.

Ami:  So I want to come back to that point and pick up on that in a moment. You said the word that comes is matanah or the gifted nature of what we've received and how this world works. The other thing that comes to mind for me is a sense of connection. When I hold these species with that kind of recognition of both the creative process itself, the life of a plant, and how marvelous that is, and I’m recognizing that this is all coming from the source of all, from God, I think part of that is that we're able to kind of feel, in a very fundamental way: I am connected to this universe and I am connected to the Creator. 

Imu: Beautiful. I love that. And I think that’s also wise, that gifts are wonderful because something is given to you and is ready for you, but also, gifts imply a giver, and the relationship and that connection come together.

Ami: But I want to now come back to another thing you mentioned, because you said, you know, it's like once upon a time, God's world was a garden where you could just take and eat. That's almost true, that's partially true, but let's go back to some of the contrasts that we noticed earlier. What was happening back in the Garden when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge? If the mitzvah of arba minim seems to involve taking a fruit and opening up a full recognition of the source of this fruit, and our relationship with that source – well, how was that dynamic playing out back when Eve saw that beautiful fruit on that one tree?

God basically said: “You can eat all the fruits in this whole garden and eat to your heart's content, but there's one tree, עֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע (the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), that you may not eat from.” Here I kind of want to bring in some of Rabbi Fohrman's teaching on this, that the fundamental message there is: Take everything you want from this world, but recognize that there is a Creator to the garden. Because דַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע (knowing good and evil) is the Creator's domain. If you can respect and acknowledge the Creator's domain, you can really eat and enjoy from everything in the world, because you're recognizing that all of it is coming from that source.

Imu:  So what you're saying, and the way Rabbi Fohrman likes to say this is, God gave the world as a gift to Adam and Eve, and He made it so that they don't have to walk around and say “thank you” all the time or perform thank-you sacrifices. He kind of made a default state of “thank you,” a default state of connection and admission, by creating a tree that they can't eat from. It's almost like the recognition tree. As long as you don't eat from the tree but you eat from all the other trees, you're perpetually in this process of connection, recognition, and thanks to God, because you're staying away from the Master's tree. 

Ami:  It kind of creates a fundamental lens through which you see everything else.

Imu:  Right. The moment Eve thinks, “Hey, that tree looks great to eat,” then that framework dissolves, and the respect and the admission and the appreciation, understanding where this garden comes from… that all fizzles away. 

Ami:  In a sense Adam and Eve had to kind of forcibly ignore or force themselves to forget the Creator, to eat from that tree. And you know what the consequences are? If this is how you want to take fruit in this world, it's going to be in disconnect from Me, it's going to be in distance from Me, it's going to be without joy, and it's going to be ultimately out of My garden.

Imu:  It's going to be with sadness.

Ami:  It’s going to be with sadness. Adam's curse, Eve's curse, the sadness of reaping the fruits of this world – childbearing and literally eating, come to harvest time, you're eating the fruits of the land. As we've seen, the element of simchah, it doesn't appear right there when you're harvesting all of your crop. It's only appearing now that you've collected all of the four arba minim and that you're kind of developing this awareness of source and of connection and that giftedness, and all of this is coming from God, and this is what animates my life and enlivens the world I live in.

What happens now when you go into your kitchen or into your storehouse, and you start eating the fruit that you took from your harvest? All of a sudden, everything you've gathered, everything you've toiled for, it takes on a different quality.

Imu:  Totally.

Ami:  That harvest now isn't a fruit that's disconnected from its source. That harvest now is – every potato and every apple and every tomato is – enjoying and tasting the fruit that God has gifted you.

Imu: You know, when you eat the fruit from the megastore, the produce doesn't taste nearly the same as if you buy from the farmer's market or if you buy at the farm. I think that's true chemically, but I also think it's true psychologically, spiritually.

There's something terribly sad and colorless about Adam and Eve who, in their desire for the fruit, severed it from its source. So maybe they got to enjoy some fruit, but it's totally separate from a major source of its happiness, which is fruit in relationship. In relationship to the leaf, to the branch, to the tree, to the water, and to its ultimate source, God.

Ami: And God is kind of giving us this mitzvah that sounds so similar to the very first mitzvah that was violated. It sounds so similar! Like, why would God be telling us to do the first thing people didn't do right?

But it sounds as if in some wild way, God is saying: “Okay, you know what? You are fruit-eaters in this world. You are cultivators in this world. You are creators in this world. I want to invite you to be able to take the harvest that you've grown, but I want you to eat it like you're in My garden. I want you to be able to come take the fruit and taste it and know where it comes from.”

The arba minim are actually what bring us the awareness of what has truly animated this process, what's truly responsible for this fruit that I've gathered and harvested. It's not just my tractor and my toil and my hard work that I put in. The Creator makes this life-giving process happen all the time and is giving that to us. In a sense, the arba minim are what make me aware of where all of this comes from.

Imu: It's like this umbilical cord.

Fruits Will Bring Joy

Ami: So then my harvest can be truly a Divine joy. Without the arba minim, I worked hard, and doggone it, I'm going to enjoy my food and just eat and drink and be merry for seven days. And then, you know what? Then I'm hitting the field on day nine, and just going back to work and breaking my back for another year, so I can then enjoy the week of it a year from now.

That's not the joy the Torah is talking about. The joy the Torah is talking about has to do with fully receiving the blessing from God. And the gateway to that actually is the arba minim, because it's the arba minim that let us sense that in its fullness. Then I go back and I eat my crops, and I taste that in my crops, and I identify the food I'm eating as this berakhah (blessing), as this Divine gift.

Imu:  It's beautiful. A beautiful concept.

Ami:  So I want us to revisit this element of joy of Sukkot and happiness. These other holidays – Pesach, Shavuot – they're identified as kind of the core essence of liberation, the essence of giving of Torah. What would it mean if Sukkot is somehow clueing us in to the essence of joy, to a kind of fundamental quality of what simchah is?

It seems to be clear that what it's not, it's not counting the potatoes in your barrel. It's not merely the joy or gratification of how well your investments did at the end of the year. Davka, specifically, when we're at the time of all the ingathering, we're being commanded to take the things that, as you pointed out, we're not going to be eating, and to hold them so that they can allow us to experience a different kind of joy, that joy of recognition of Creator and our connection with God.

What if Sukkot is the time of year where we are centering our spiritual work and our religious practice around tapping into that kind of essential joy, for it to be able to teach us a little bit, what could it be like to live joyously? 

Imu:  I don't think Sukkot is the only time to be happy. It's sort of that time to remind yourself how happiness is fostered, because it's this time of bounty. 

Ami:  You’ve filled your storehouses with your harvest. Now, go find out where joy comes from. Hold the four species and wave them around in joy. And go eat, have a blast for the next week – but not simply because of the pears that you’ve collected, but because of that recognition of your relationship with your Source, with the Creator of all. 

Credits

This episode was recorded by Ami Silver together with Imu Shalev.

When this episode originally aired on Aleph Beta, it was edited by Ami Silver.

This episode was produced for Into the Verse by Sarah Penso and Tikva Hecht.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman.

Our managing producer is Adina Blaustein.

Our senior editor is me, Ari Levisohn. 

Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you in two weeks for the start of another amazing cycle through the Torah. We have some really great stuff in store. But until then, from all of us at Aleph Beta, wishing you a wonderful Sukkot.