Why sukkahs are made of waste, and what it teaches us about God – opinion

The Torah in Deuteronomy (16:13) commands observing the festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles) “when you gather [the products] from your granary and from your wine press.” The plain meaning of this verse is that Sukkot is celebrated at the time of year when the harvest is completed after the produce has been collected and stored. 

The Talmud, however, in Tractate Sukkah (12a), offers a surprising interpretation of this verse that forms the basis of one of the most basic and important halakhot (laws) relevant to the sukkah. Namely, the Talmud infers from this verse that the s’chach (the covering or roof), which is the primary component of the sukkah, must be made of “the refuse of the granary and wine press.” In other words, the roof of the sukkah must be made not only of vegetation but of refuse: material that cannot be eaten or used for any constructive purpose.

It is striking that the s’chach is described in such terms. The festival of Sukkot celebrates the produce of the “granary and wine press,” the successful harvest that has just been reaped, collected, and stored for the winter. According to the Talmud’s reading, the Torah commands celebrating this bounty in a structure made specifically from the refuse that is discarded during the harvesting process. 

We celebrate and give thanks for the food we have produced by residing in a dwelling made from non-usable materials produced by the fields. It appears that the Torah seeks to divert the farmer’s attention away from the food that he had just produced and take note of the discarded piles of refuse that had been formed in the process.

I’d like to suggest two approaches to this interesting ruling.

Our relationship with Hashem

The first idea relates to our relationship with God.

As the Torah states explicitly elsewhere (Leviticus 23:43), the sukkah commemorates the conditions in which Israelites lived during their sojourn in the wilderness.

With the end of the harvest season, when the warehouses are filled with food produced by the people through their hard work and ingenuity, they are told to remember their ancestors’ experience in the wilderness. They are reminded of the time when our nation was incapable of surviving by natural means, through agricultural work, and were sustained miraculously by the Almighty, thus reinforcing their belief that despite their hard work and effort, their sustenance ultimately depends solely on God.

As part of this experience, the Torah directs our attention away from the food we’ve produced and onto the “refuse.” We are reminded that, as Moses told the Israelites in reflecting upon their supernatural survival in the wilderness, “a person does not live on bread alone, but rather on anything declared by the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3). After the food has been produced and collected from the granary and wine press, the Torah tells us to use specifically the “reject material,” to remind ourselves that from God’s perspective, the refuse is just as valuable and significant as the food. God can take care of us with the refuse no less than He can with the actual produce.

This challenges us to balance our appreciation for material wealth and military success with an awareness of our dependence on the Almighty, with the realization that ultimately, it is He who sustains us, and it is He upon whom we must rely as much as or even more so than upon our material and military assets.

One man's trash is another man's treasure

The second explanation that occurred to me relates to man’s relationship with his fellow man.

We live in a world where people are very much judged on their material success: how much money they have, how big their house is, how fancy their car is – in short, how much they have succeeded in “gathering in the products of the granary and the wine press.”

Perhaps the fact that the Torah and the rabbis tell us that only the refuse – that which we generally discard – is kosher for the main part of the sukkah is a pointer to how we should value the people who do not “make it” in today’s super materialistic world.

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks often quoted Mahatma Gandhi, who is credited with saying: “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”

Maybe Gandhi was a Talmud scholar in his spare time.

Without the s’chach, we don’t have a sukkah, and all the material wealth in the world will not help you fulfil that mitzvah (commandment).

Perhaps the subliminal message is that we must value that which the rest of society rejects as inferior and useless, as well as the people in our society who have the least, and who struggle both materially and psychologically.

We must look after them, protect them, and honor them.

While Judaism does not reject the idea of material comforts, it does not place it at the center of our beings – that place, and the place of greatest honor, is reserved for those who protect the weak and vulnerable.

After all – and we certainly know this now, even if we didn’t before – we ourselves are weak and vulnerable without the guiding hand and protection of Hashem.

So with this dual message of the s’chach in mind, we can truly fulfill the mitzvah of v’samahta bahaha – you shall rejoice in your festival. Chag sameach.

The writer is a rabbi and physician who lives in Ramat Poleg, Netanya, and is a co-founder of Techelet – Inspiring Judaism.