Chag Sameach – Happy Holiday! This is our traditional greeting for all of our Jewish Holidays. Sukkot gets special joyous attention as this is the theme of this holiday.

But joy isn’t easy. For some people they seem to be happy all the time, but for the lot of us, joy is something that we need to work on achieving.

How do we do that? How do we get to a place of joy?

A new favorite line I recently heard; “To judge what is, is to be in conflict with the Creator”.

I think this is a powerful teaching and carries in it the secret of joy. It also tells us why specifically the holiday of Sukkot gets this attention of joy over all the other holidays.

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It is normal and human to judge what is. After all, the body relates to what it encounters. But our soul empowers us to see what truly is. And what truly is G-d's creation and whatever other circumstances we are encountering that is engendering judgement.

When we are close to Hashem, we can be at ease and at peace with what is. Coming from the holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when we are the closest to Hashem, we are empowered to be beyond judgement. Beyond judgement is where Joy lives. Sukkot is the manifestation of the closeness of the holy days in joy.

I invite you to carry the energy of the High Holy Days into the Joyous days of Sukkot. Internalize that closeness, dance it with your feet, put your head away, connect with it, bond with it and when the days of winter come along we will both be empowered to return to that special bond over and over again!

Chag Sameach, Good Yom Tov, looking forward to celebrating together!

Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman