What's in a holiday?

(From Jerusalem Post)

Byline: Jonathan Rosenblum

There is a mitzva of rejoicing on each of the three pilgrimage festivals of the Jewish calendar. We are encouraged to have festive meals, with meat and wine, and husbands are enjoined to buy their wives new clothing or jewelry for the holiday.

Yet of the three festivals only Succot is specifically known as zman simhateinu - the time of our rejoicing.

What exactly is the special connection between Succot and joy? A hint to the answer lies in a puzzling Midrash. The Midrash asks why we begin building our succah immediately after the sealing of our judgment for the coming year on Yom Kippur. The Midrash answers that perhaps the Jewish people received a judgment of exile, but in lieu of exile God accepts our leaving our homes and entering the succah.

To understand this Midrash, we must first understand the meaning of exile. Our nearly 2,000-year exile began as a consequence of sinat hinam, causeless enmity, between Jews. Exile follows from sinat hinam not as a punishment, but to repair the failure of vision that gave rise to a lack of unity in the first place.

Sinat hinam, the habit of viewing our fellow Jews with a jaundiced eye, arises out of a view of the world as essentially an arena for competition over scarce goods. If we view the purpose of life as the acquisition of the largest possible slice of a fixed pie of material goods, then life becomes a zero sum game, in which someone else's victory is of necessity my loss. In such a world, we are all competitors.