Spiritual Holidays, Part 5

Holiday of Sukkot and Its Symbols

Five days after the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) comes the holiday of Sukkot, which means that a person receives five upper lights of NRNHY and comes to the state when one is under the influence of the surrounding light. In order to receive the surrounding light, a person must perform an action on oneself called building a hut, Sukkah. This is a restriction that as if blocks the upper light from a person because he or she does not want to receive it for one’s own fulfillment, but wants to receive it only for self-correction. A person continues the same line: from the New Year through Yom Kippur to Sukkot.

Thus a person builds a screen (Masach) called “Schach,” “roof,” which symbolizes that only a small light can penetrate through this roof. One sits in the shade of the hut for seven days which represents a correction of all seven egoistic parts of the shattered soul: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut.

Only then, once one is already corrected, one leaves the Sukkah and on the eighth day, Shemini Atzeret, celebrates the Giving of the Torah, i.e., one begins to receive the upper light already in the style of bestowal.

Question: Is the roof,  Schach or screen, made from waste?

Answer: Yes, out of branches of various trees and stalks of various grains.

Question: Waste symbolizes things that are unimportant to us, and we raise them to make them important. What exactly is important to us?

Answer: Things that we previously considered not important for us, we neglected bestowal, love, coming closer to other people, “loving your neighbor as yourself”—the qualities that we need to develop—now, on the contrary, we raise above our heads. That is, we want to implement them at any cost.

Question: During the holiday of Sukkot, we use the attributes of four types of plants: willow, myrtle, palm, and citron. What do they symbolize?

Answer: They represent four phases of our egoism, which we correct, connect together, and then we can attract the upper light upon ourselves.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/29/19