Episode Details

 Why did the greatest sages of Israel dance through the night over a pitcher of ordinary water? Why were there fifteen steps in the Beit HaMikdash, fifteen Shir HaMa’alot, and five days between Yom Kippur—the tenth of Tishrei—and Sukkot on the fifteenth? And why does the Mishnah make the astonishing claim that someone who never witnessed Simḥat Beit HaSho’evah “never saw joy in his life”? 

This holiday Breakfast & Class became much more personal than I expected. We
journey from the waters that cried at Creation, to David HaMelekh and the
fifteen Songs of Ascent, from a childhood memory of hearing my neighbor hammer together his sukkah immediately after Yom Kippur, to a Holocaust survivor riding endlessly on a Madison Avenue bus—and finally to my own experience of returning from Israel this year while my wife, children and grandchildren remained behind. Somewhere along those fifteen steps lies a remarkable Sukkot lesson: simḥah is not the absence of difficulty or loneliness. Simḥah is what happens when what appears separated discovers that it was connected all along. And perhaps the greatest discovery of all is realizing that we are never truly alone.