Shabbat Parashat Haazinu 5786

Moreshet Shaul: With Sason, Not for Sason

At Simchat Beit Hashoeva, the festive Sukkot celebration, the people would say: “Fortunate is one who did not sin, and one who sinned, shall repent and be forgiven” (Sukka 53a). It is clear that this [embrace of people with different religious pasts] engenders a demonstration of unity between those who are loyal to the Torah of Moshe and Israel. The drawing of water, along with the practical obligation to pour libations of water on Sukkot, contained a significant symbolic element of repentance. This is based on the idea that is found in the pasuk, “Pour out your heart like water …” (Eicha 2:19).  

Another poignant pasuk on water is, “You shall draw water with joy (b’sason) from the wellsprings of salvation” (Yeshayahu 12:3). A unique characteristic of a wellspring is that the water flows away from its source and is replenished. At times, the wellspring has a weak flow, and it can appear that it is drying up, but then soon thereafter a new flow appears and the spring is restored to its former state.

They would also say at the Simchat Beit Hashoeva: “Our fathers who were in this place (the Beit Hamikdash) had their backs to the Holies and their faces eastward, and they would bow down eastward toward the sun, but our eyes are toward Hashem.” Rabbi Yehuda claimed that they would repeat the matter and say: “We are to Hashem, and our eyes are to Hashem” (Mishna, Sukka 5:4).

Along these lines, the “wellsprings of Israel” never dried up. Against all calculations, matters develop in a different direction. Many times, the wise men of the nations of the world “stood with their watches in their hands” to see the end of Am Yisrael, but it was they who disappeared. Many times, cynics within our nation stood up to see when the Torah of Israel would cease to be preserved, and they were proven wrong. At different times, we have seen those who see everything that has to do with Israel and its Torah as antiquated. They bow down to the sun in the east, representing that they see the “rising sun” among the nations, whereas they see the holy in Israel as something to turn one’s back on. This is not just incidental distancing of oneself, but purposely turning the head away. Nevertheless, that period was over [by the time of this declaration], and a new generation arose. The new generation had people who acted appropriately from the time of their youth, and others, as described in the gemara, who began acting properly later on, so that their older ages had to bring atonement for the sins of their youth. But one way or the other, both types came to the Beit Hamikdash to celebrate.

The explanation is that the Jewish spirit is not satiated by the vanities that the gentile world has to offer. At the end of the historical process, they became tired with the wild partying, which does not have any real content. Rather, it only incites people to acts of sin and causes the foundations of Jewish society to crumble.

The gemara (Sukka 48b) tells of a heretic whose name was Sason, and he exclaimed based on the aforementioned pasuk of “You shall draw water with joy (b’sason) from the wellsprings of salvation” that in the World to Come they would draw water for Sason. They responded to him that the pasuk did not say “l’sason” (for Sason) but b’sason (with joy). The message behind this story is that for us, sason is but a means of encouraging proper action. As such, it is usually hidden from the eye. The life of a Jew involves hard work and never ceasing tension. When the time for sason comes, it is “with sason,” as a means towards an end – to sum up what happened in the past and to use it to strengthen our resolve toward the future.

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