Why Can We Sometimes Not Repair Life Where the Problem Appears?

Why Can We Sometimes Not Repair Life Where the Problem Appears?

A person goes to a doctor because of a headache. They ask for a pill. The doctor asks how many hours they sleep, and the answer is four or five. The doctor asks how much water they drink, what their day looks like, and how much stress they carry at work. The patient almost becomes irritated: Doctor, I came because of a headache. Why are you asking me about my life? The patient wants treatment at the place where the pain appears. The doctor is trying to determine whether the problem began there at all.

We do the same thing at home. A child erupts, and we treat the eruption. An employee has lost motivation, and we give a motivational talk. A couple fights about the dishes in the sink, and they hold a long discussion about the dishes. A person cannot concentrate in prayer, so they look for another technique for concentration. A business falls into another cash-flow crisis, so another loan is taken. We become experts at putting out the fire where the flames are visible without asking where the match was struck.

Precisely in the sukkah there is a halachic law that forces us to think differently.

The Torah says: “You shall make for yourself the Festival of Sukkot for seven days” (Deuteronomy 16:13). From the word “make,” the sages derive a fundamental principle in the laws of sukkah: “You shall make, and not from that which is already made” (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 11b). A sukkah must be created in a valid manner. One cannot arrive at a result that now appears valid when its validity emerged automatically from a state that had been invalid.

The Mishnah gives a concrete example: “If one trained a vine, a gourd, or ivy over it and covered it with schach, it is invalid... but if the valid schach was greater than them, or if he cut them, it is valid” (Mishnah, Sukkah 1:4). The Gemara, however, explains that cutting alone is not always sufficient because of the rule “you shall make, and not from that which is already made.” According to the details of the law, an additional act may be required to render the schach valid after it has been cut (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 11b).

This law was not, of course, stated as a lesson in psychotherapy or problem solving. It concerns the halachic validity of a sukkah. Yet the picture it places before us is striking: there are situations in which we cannot look only at the present result and ask whether it now looks correct. We have to ask how it came into being.

This is a profound idea because we live in a world that rewards results above almost everything else.

If the child is quiet, everything is fine.

If the employee meets the targets, everything is fine.

If the couple is not fighting, everything is fine.

If the bank account is balanced this month, everything is fine.

If the person is smiling, everything is fine.

But in many places the Torah teaches that the final appearance does not tell the whole story.

The prophet Jeremiah says: “If you thoroughly improve your ways and your deeds” (Jeremiah 7:3). The people come to the Temple and place their confidence in the very fact that the Temple is in their midst: “The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these” (Jeremiah 7:4). Jeremiah tells them that the sacred structure cannot replace repairing the way that brought a person into it. One can stand in the right place while continuing to live in the wrong way.

Isaiah likewise describes a people who perform many religious acts and ask why those acts do not seem to work: “Why have we fasted and You have not seen? Why have we afflicted our soul and You have not known?” (Isaiah 58:3). The prophet does not answer by giving them a more effective technique for fasting. He brings them back to the root of the social reality: “Behold, you fast for strife and contention... Is this the fast that I have chosen?... Undo the bonds of wickedness... Is it not to share your bread with the hungry?” (Isaiah 58:4-7). The problem is not that the fast is insufficiently intense. The problem is that they are trying to repair something on the upper floor whose root lies on the lower floor.

King Solomon also says: “Above all that you guard, guard your heart, for from it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23). The verse does not tell us only to guard external behavior. It directs our attention to the source: “for from it are the issues of life.” There are outcomes we see outside, but they emerge from a deeper place.

When King David seeks repair after his sin, he does not content himself with asking that the result disappear. He says: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalms 51:12). He asks for change at the place from which behavior grows. He does not ask only that the stain be erased, but that the person from whom the stain arose undergo repair.

Maimonides defines repentance not merely as stopping the act but as a deeper process: “What is repentance? It is when the sinner abandons his sin, removes it from his thoughts, and resolves in his heart never to do it again” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 2:2). There is abandonment of the act, but there is also thought, inner resolution, and a changed relationship to the sin. If the person merely stops the external outcome while the internal system remains exactly as it was, the question is what will happen when the circumstances return.

Only after this Torah foundation is clear can we turn to psychology, where we encounter an important distinction between symptom management and the attempt to understand the mechanisms that generate and maintain a problem. This does not mean that every symptom hides one simple “root,” and certainly an article cannot diagnose a person. Human problems can emerge from combinations of biological, environmental, behavioral, and social factors. Yet in therapy and behavioral interventions, it is often crucial to ask what mechanism continues to produce the problem, not only how to reduce its latest expression.

We can see this clearly in the simple example of chronic lateness. A manager sees that an employee repeatedly arrives late and warns him. The employee improves for two weeks and then begins arriving late again. The manager can keep adding warnings, but it is also possible to ask what generates the lateness. Perhaps every morning the employee leaves home at a time that, under ideal conditions, would bring him to work at exactly the right moment. Every small traffic delay then becomes an arrival problem. In that case the issue is not lack of knowledge. He knows perfectly well that work begins at eight. The problem lies in the system that repeatedly creates the same outcome.

The same thing happens at home. Parents say that their ten-year-old “goes crazy every evening.” He shouts, fights with his siblings, and resists every request. They try to talk to him about anger. But when they examine the entire day, they discover that he comes home exhausted, eats almost nothing, spends hours in front of a screen, and begins homework at nine thirty at night. The eruption may indeed be a problem that requires boundaries, but it may also be the final station in a chain that began hours earlier.

Sometimes the child does not begin to erupt at nine thirty. At nine thirty we simply begin to see what has been building since four in the afternoon.

This insight changes how we look at marriage as well. A couple fights every time one spouse arrives late. The argument sounds as though it is about twenty minutes. “You said you would be home at seven.” “So I came at seven twenty. What happened?” But sometimes the twenty minutes are only the schach. Beneath them sits an entirely different story. One spouse has experienced for years that they are always in second place. The lateness is no longer merely lateness. It becomes another piece of evidence for an existing internal story: “I am not important enough to you.”

If they deal only with the twenty minutes, the fight will return in another form.

Tomorrow it will be the phone at dinner.

The next day it will be a decision made without consultation.

The outcome changes. The root remains.

We do this in the workplace as well. An excellent employee begins making mistakes. The manager sends the employee to another training session. The mistakes continue, so another procedure is introduced. But perhaps that employee is currently carrying a workload that three people used to handle. In that case, another training session is not a solution. It may even deepen the employee’s sense that something is wrong with them when the real problem is that the system itself is unreasonable.

There is an important parallel in research on behavior and habits. Studies of implementation intentions, associated especially with Peter Gollwitzer and his colleagues, show that general intention alone is not always enough to produce change. Concrete “if X happens, I will do Y” plans can help translate intention into action. A meta-analysis by Gollwitzer and Sheeran examined 94 independent tests and found a meaningful effect on goal achievement, and later research has continued to examine the conditions under which this kind of planning is useful.

But there is an even deeper point. If a person says every evening, “Starting tomorrow I will not touch my phone while I am with the children,” and repeatedly fails, perhaps the solution is not to make a fifth commitment to become a stronger person. The system can be changed: the phone remains in another room during the meal. Instead of fighting the same temptation from scratch every evening, the person changes the conditions under which the decision is made. Research on implementation intentions points precisely to the importance of linking a predefined situation to a predefined response rather than relying only on willpower in the moment.

This brings us to one of the most important questions in life: what problem am I trying to solve again and again at the same point even though its cause lies somewhere else?

A person says, “I have to stop buying nonsense.” Every month they regret the purchases again. But perhaps the question is not only what they buy. It is why every time they feel bad, they enter a shopping website. If buying functions as a quick way to feel better, blocking the credit card may help, but one must also understand what the person is trying to obtain through the purchase.

A person says, “I have to stop shouting.” That is an important decision. But perhaps it is also worth examining why every evening they arrive home with their system already at the breaking point. Are they taking on too much? Do they come through the door and continue answering work messages? Is there not even a ten-minute transition between the two worlds? The shouting requires accountability, but real accountability is not only apologizing after it happens. It also means building a life in which it is less likely to happen.

A person says, “I have to concentrate more in prayer.” They try a new commentary, a new prayer book, and a new resolution. But they arrive at prayer after four hours of sleep, in the middle of twenty unanswered messages, with the phone vibrating in their pocket. Perhaps the problem is not only the intention behind the words “Blessed are You.” Perhaps part of the repair begins an hour before prayer, or even the night before.

There is also a major lesson here in education. When a child fails an exam, it is easy to ask: why did you not study? But sometimes we need to take one step back. Does the child know how to study? Can they break a large amount of material into manageable parts? Do they understand what they read? Are they so afraid of failure that they postpone studying until the last moment? Do they sit for two hours in front of a book without really knowing what to do with it?

The grade is an outcome.

A wise parent does not stop at asking how to raise the grade. The parent asks: what system produced it?

The same is true in a community and in society. When someone repeatedly comes to ask for financial assistance, the immediate need may of course require help, and sometimes it is an obligation that cannot be postponed. But if we want to help for the long term, we may need to ask what repeatedly creates the same shortage. Is the income insufficient? Is there debt? Are expenses unmanaged? Was there a medical event? Are benefits or rights being missed? There is no single answer, but there is a difference between lifting someone out of a pit today and investigating why they fall into the same pit every month.

And now we reach an uncomfortable insight: sometimes we prefer treating the symptom precisely because it allows us not to touch the root.

It is easier to hire a private tutor for a child than to ask whether something deeper is happening at school.

It is easier to buy a gift for a spouse than to begin a conversation about the distance that has developed.

It is easier to take another loan than to change a standard of living.

It is easier to apologize again for anger than to admit that the life we have built leaves us permanently exhausted.

It is easier to promise that tomorrow we will change than to alter the structure that keeps returning us to the same place.

Because a symptom asks for repair.

A root may ask for change.

And change costs more.

Perhaps this is why the words “you shall make, and not from that which is already made” can become for us, beyond their halachic context, a question for personal accounting. There are things for which it is not enough that the final result look orderly. We need to examine how they became that way.

Is the peace at home genuine, or has everyone simply learned not to talk about what hurts?

Has the child “worked things out,” or has the child only stopped telling us?

Has the employee “returned to functioning,” or is the employee quietly searching for another job?

Am I calmer, or have I simply distanced myself from everyone who challenges me?

Was the problem solved, or did we merely stop seeing it?

Perhaps this is one of the deepest lessons we can take from the sukkah into life: not everything that looks repaired has actually undergone repair.

Sometimes we need to stop asking only, “How do I make this stop?” and begin asking, “What in my life keeps producing this?”

Then comes the hardest question of all: if I already know what produces the problem, am I willing to change even the thing I am used to, enjoy, or am afraid to relinquish?

Because sometimes the problem does not return because we failed to find a good enough solution.

It returns because every time we repaired the schach while leaving the root attached to exactly the same place.