A Hug from G-d 

Sometimes the things that make no sense from the outside are the very things that bring the deepest joy. That’s true in sports, in life, and in Judaism.

The Satisfaction Is Worth It All

Swimming is one of the most popular sports in high schools. Students train almost every day, two full hours in the pool.

A parent once told me that his son had joined the swim team. “Two hours a day,” he said. I asked, “So your son comes home late every evening?” He shook his head. “No—it’s in the morning. From 5:30 to 7:30.”

I was surprised. “Who takes him to school at that hour?” He pointed to himself.

Now, we were speaking on a bitter winter night, with a snowstorm raging outside. So I asked him, “Tomorrow morning, in the middle of this storm, you’re really going to wake up at five and take your son to swim practice?” I honestly couldn’t understand it. What could motivate both him and his son to make such a sacrifice, while most people would much prefer to stay warm under the covers?

Some time later he was a guest at my Shabbos table. I told him about my brother, who had gone on shlichus to China. He was curious—where does he find kosher food? Is there a Jewish school there? And then he turned to me and said, with real puzzlement, “I don’t understand. What motivates your brother to leave a normal life behind and make such a sacrifice?”

I told him, “Yes, there is sacrifice. But it’s worth it—for the deep satisfaction that comes with it.”

He smiled at me and said, “Do you remember when you asked about my son’s swimming—why he gets up before dawn to swim two hours a day? Well, there’s your answer!” 

When Everything Feels Temporary

That brings us to the holiday of Sukkot. One of its other names is Chag Ha’asif—the Festival of Ingathering. Out of all the ancient agricultural holidays, this one should have been the most peaceful and relaxed.

Think about it: on Passover, the barley is ripening and the farmer is rushing to harvest. On Shavuot—forget about it. Everyone is working in the fields, no one has time. Only on Sukkot, when the season is over and the work is done, can a person finally sit back, take a breath, and enjoy the fruits of his labor. That’s why the Torah says specifically about Sukkot: “You shall rejoice on your festival.”

But then comes the surprising command: leave your home and move into a sukkah. Or, in the words of the Talmud (Sukkah 2a): “Leave your permanent house and live in a temporary one.” Just when you want to enjoy the strength and security you’ve built up all year, the Torah tells you to step out into a fragile little hut.

Even the details of the mitzvah drive this home. A sukkah taller than twenty cubits isn’t valid—because a sukkah has to feel temporary, not permanent like a fortress. And the roof, the s’chach, has to be made of natural branches and open to the sky.

Sitting in a sukkah creates a sense of vulnerability. At the very moment when you’d like to feel established and secure, you’re reminded that life itself is temporary. A holiday that begins as a celebration of abundance and success turns into a lesson in humility and impermanence.

The Midrash puts it this way: “Why do we build a sukkah after Yom Kippur? … Perhaps the Jewish people were sentenced to exile. By leaving their homes for the sukkah, God counts it as if they went into exile to Babylonia” (Yalkut Shimoni, Emor 653).

A Hug from G-d for the Whole Year

But there is another way to look at Sukkot. The sukkah isn’t only a reminder of life’s fragility. It also symbolizes a hug—the embrace of the Divine Presence.

Kabbalah explains the relationship between the High Holidays and Sukkot as two arms of a person embracing. In the Song of Songs (8:3) it says: “His left hand is under my head, and His right hand embraces me.” The Arizal interprets: “His left hand under my head” refers to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which represent divine judgment and discipline. Then comes “His right hand embraces me”—Sukkot, a time of kindness and love.

As Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi writes in Likkutei Torah: Just as one who loves another hugs them and won’t let go, so too the s’chach and the three walls of the sukkah are like G-d’s embrace, surrounding us from every side (Likkutei Torah, Nitzavim, p. 96). Elsewhere he explains that the three required walls correspond to the three joints of the right arm, which together form the Divine hug (ibid., p. 79).

For an outsider, Sukkot might look uncomfortable: leaving a warm, well-lit home with all its conveniences, and sitting instead in a small hut that may be cold, crowded, rained on, or even plagued by bees. But anyone who has truly experienced the sukkah knows the joy, the uplift, the deep spiritual feeling that comes from sitting there. You feel the hug of G-d Himself.

Most mitzvot involve only a part of us: prayer with the lips, tefillin on the arm and head. The sukkah is unique: it surrounds the entire person. As the Rebbe once said, even your muddy boots are included (Toras Menachem, vol. 3, p. 262). The message is clear: G-d accepts you completely, exactly as you are.

There’s a story of a young orphan in Haifa in the 1960s. With no family to raise him, he was sent to the Diskin Orphanage in Jerusalem. Life there was harsh. There was no warmth, no love, no real sense of home. Many of the children grew up rebelling and drifting away from Jewish life—and he was no different.

At eighteen he returned to Haifa. One Friday night, feeling bored, he got into his car and decided to check out a Hasidic gathering led by the Rebbe of Seret-Vizhnitz. But as he sat there, he was overwhelmed with guilt for having driven on Shabbat. He finally went up to the Rebbe and confessed: “I feel terrible—I came here by car.”

The Rebbe embraced him and said, “My dear son, come whenever you want and however you want.”

Years later that man recalled: “The Rebbe hugged me with both arms—and he never let go.” That hug brought him back to Judaism and he went on to raise a beautiful, committed family.

That is the sukkah. It is G-d’s embrace around us. And if we open ourselves to it, we can carry that embrace with us for the entire year.