{"id":274,"date":"2026-09-25T07:17:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T07:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/?p=274"},"modified":"2026-09-25T07:17:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T07:17:43","slug":"pulse-of-the-machzor-sukkos-5787-temporary-tenants-timeless-treasures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/?p=274","title":{"rendered":"Pulse of the Machzor \u2013 Sukkos 5787: Temporary Tenants, Timeless Treasures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

A sukkah is a rental, not a purchase \u2014 and the Malbim tells us what we get to keep<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

This week I came across a remarkable, highly publicized story. A Manhattan tenant paid his landlord a hefty fee, with a formal contract signed before a lawyer, to rent an abandoned corner of the roof for his sukkah. While clearing out the debris, he found a bag of diamonds hidden in an old pipe, and the court awarded them to him, since the roof was legally his for the week. It\u2019s a wonderful story. It\u2019s also, as far as I can tell, fiction: there is no record of the case, and no New York court would hand hidden property to a seven-day tenant. Fiction or not, it gets one thing right: a sukkah is a rental, not a purchase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A temporary dwelling<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

According to Rabbi Akiva,1<\/a><\/sup> the sukkah must be a diras arai<\/em>, a temporary2<\/a><\/sup> dwelling.3<\/a><\/sup> For seven days we leave our permanent homes for a makeshift hut and discover that we get along fine without the furnishings and controlled environment we thought we could not live without.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if the point is to forgo our comforts, the halacha of mitztaeir<\/em> is hard to understand. If it is too cold, too hot, raining, or there are too many bugs, you are exempt. Shouldn\u2019t the discomfort be the whole point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gemara4<\/a><\/sup> derives the exemption from the Torah\u2019s command to dwell in the sukkah: teishvu k\u2019ein taduru<\/em>, you live in it the way you live in your home. Nobody stays in a house that is flooding or swarming with bugs, so no one has to stay in the sukkah under those conditions either. The sukkah, then, is not meant to make us suffer. It teaches something subtler: that we can be completely at home in a dwelling we know is temporary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can be completely at home in a dwelling we know is temporary.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n

Hotel-room investments<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

That is precisely what Sukkos asks of us. Aside from Sukkos, the Chumash calls it Chag Ha\u2019asif<\/em>, the harvest festival. After months of working the land, the farmer could finally take pride in his newly filled silos, which is exactly when material bounty is most likely to crowd out everything else. The Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush Wisser, 1809\u20131879) explains that the mitzvah of sukkah is timed to counteract that tendency.5<\/a><\/sup> He compares this world to a hotel. We expect a hotel room to be comfortable and have everything we need, but we would never pour money into renovating a room we will check out of in a few nights. Our material investments are hotel-room investments, with limited returns. Investments in our spiritual lives, however, which give life meaning, always make sense: deepening our relationships with family and friends, doing chesed<\/em> for others, setting aside real time for learning Torah, pausing to appreciate the greatness of the Ribono Shel Olam<\/em> and the countless kindnesses He does for us every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Owner keeps the building<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Which brings us back to that roof in Manhattan. The story could not be true, because in the real world a seven-day tenant does not walk away with the treasure; whatever he finds stays with the building\u2019s owner. That is exactly Malbim\u2019s point. We are all short-term tenants here, and the Owner keeps the building. The only treasure we take with us is what we have built into ourselves. We just spent Elul and the Aseres Yemei Teshuvah<\/em> asking for another year of life. There is no better time to decide where this year\u2019s investments will go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chag Sameach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
  1. Talmud Bavli,<\/em> Sukkah 23a. \u21a9<\/a><\/li>
  2. Sometimes even the authorities agree. In early 20th-century New York, Yosef Herman was summoned to court on Erev Sukkos for building an illegal wooden hut on his roof. When he asked for two weeks to take it down, the judge refused: \u201cI give you eight days,\u201d precisely the time he needed for the mitzvah. Ruchoma Shain, All for the Boss<\/em> (Feldheim, 2001). \u21a9<\/a><\/li>
  3. Hence, for example, the rabbis disqualified some materials for s\u2019chach,<\/em> including boards four tefachim<\/em> wide (about twelve inches), which were commonly used for roofs. \u21a9<\/a><\/li>
  4. Talmud Bavli,<\/em> Sukkah 26a. \u21a9<\/a><\/li>
  5. Malbim, Al HaTorah,<\/em> Vayikra 23:43. \u21a9<\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-machshava","category-yamim-tovim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yiphoenix.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}