Why Does the Greatest Joy of Sukkot Begin at Night?

Why Does the Greatest Joy of Sukkot Begin at Night?

Some people know how to work extraordinarily well, solve problems, manage systems, care for a family, and carry an entire community on their shoulders. Yet precisely when a moment arrives in which there is nothing urgent to do, they become restless. As long as the phone is ringing, someone needs them, there is a task to finish, or a problem to solve, they feel in their place. Then comes a vacation, a quiet Shabbat, an evening with no obligations, or even an hour that suddenly becomes free, and instead of relief there is discomfort. They open the phone again, look for something that still needs doing, organize something that did not really need organizing, and eventually say, “I simply cannot sit without doing anything.”

But perhaps the question is not why it is hard for us to sit without doing anything. Perhaps the deeper question is what we feel about ourselves at a moment when we are not currently useful to anyone. Sometimes work is not merely what we do. It is the place from which we receive confirmation that we are needed, successful, significant, and valuable. When someone needs us, we know who we are. When no one needs us at this particular moment, something in our identity begins to shake.

Precisely on Sukkot, the Festival of Ingathering, when a person completes a long period of agricultural labor, the sages place before us one of the most surprising images of Jewish joy. The Mishnah says: “One who has not seen the rejoicing at the Place of the Water-Drawing has never seen rejoicing in his life” (Mishnah, Sukkah 5:1). The sages knew weddings, births, victories, success, and abundance, yet they chose to describe the Simchat Beit HaShoevah in these exceptional words.

The Mishnah continues by describing the scene. On the night following the first festival day they descended to the Women’s Courtyard, prepared enormous lamps, and the pious men and men of good deeds danced before the people holding torches of light and reciting songs and praises, while the Levites stood with musical instruments and played (Mishnah, Sukkah 5:2-4). The Gemara expands the description of this celebration and tells of leading sages who participated in it (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 51a and following).

Yet within this impressive description lies a detail that is easy to miss: all this great joy takes place at night. The day is already over. No fieldwork is being done. Commerce has stopped. The day’s Temple service is behind them. A person is not producing another harvest, closing another deal, or adding another achievement to the list. Precisely when the world of doing becomes quiet, a joy opens that the sages describe as almost unparalleled.

The question is obvious: why precisely then?

Rashi explains that the name “Beit HaShoevah” is connected to drawing the water for the water libation on the festival (Rashi, Sukkah 50b). Apparently, this is something very simple: water. Not gold, not expensive wine, not an impressive harvest, and not a striking human accomplishment. Precisely around the most basic thing, something a person hardly notices as long as it is plentiful, the greatest joy is built.

Tosafot cite an additional explanation in the name of the Jerusalem Talmud for the name “Beit HaShoevah”: “from there they would draw the Divine Spirit,” based on the verse, “You shall draw water with joy from the wells of salvation” (Isaiah 12:3; Tosafot, Sukkah 50b, s.v. chad tani shoevah). Suddenly the word “drawing” receives a completely different meaning. During the year a person is mainly occupied with what is being taken out of the self: work, output, solutions, responsibility, money, ideas, giving. Here the person is asked to learn another action: not only to pour out, but also to draw in; not only to give, but to become filled.

For some people this is much harder than it sounds. There is a person who knows how to give without end but hardly knows how to receive. The person knows how to care for everyone but does not know what to do when someone cares for them. The person knows how to speak before an audience but struggles to sit quietly and listen. The person knows how to hold others up, but when support is personally needed, almost feels shame. A lifetime has taught this person that value lies in what goes out from them into the world. Sukkot places before such a person an image in which drawing in becomes the center of joy.

Maimonides gives the Simchat Beit HaShoevah a very special place. He writes: “Although there is a mitzvah to rejoice on all the festivals, on the festival of Sukkot there was additional rejoicing in the Temple,” and describes how not everyone danced at the center of the circle. Rather, “the great sages of Israel, the heads of the academies, members of the Sanhedrin, the pious, the elders, and men of good deeds” were the ones who danced, played music, and rejoiced in the Temple (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Shofar, Sukkah and Lulav 8:12-14).

That list itself is fascinating. Maimonides is not describing people without standing who have nothing to lose. He selects the most respected people in Jewish society: the leading sages, the heads of the academies, members of the Sanhedrin, and the elders. During the year people stand before them, ask them questions, wait for their rulings, and honor their status. And precisely these people enter the circle and dance.

Maimonides continues: “The joy with which a person rejoices in performing a mitzvah and in the love of God who commanded it is a great service,” and warns that a person who withholds from this joy because of concern for personal dignity misses something fundamental. He concludes: “There is no greatness or honor except to rejoice before the Lord” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Shofar, Sukkah and Lulav 8:15). In other words, there is a stage at which honor can change from a force that elevates a person into a cage that confines the person.

A person spends years constructing a respectable image. No one may see excessive excitement. No one may see a mistake. No one may see playfulness. No one may see ignorance. And dancing would certainly seem beneath the role. The higher the status rises, the more dependent the person can become on how others see them. Then Maimonides offers the example of King David, who was “leaping and dancing before the Lord” (II Samuel 6:16). The great king does not lose his kingship when he dances. Quite the opposite. At that moment it becomes clear that he is great enough not to need a constant performance of greatness.

There is a very deep principle here: someone whose entire value depends on a role can never truly leave the role. At home the person is still the manager. On vacation the person is still the rabbi. With the children the person is still the commander. With a spouse the person is still the problem solver. Even when a grandchild wants to play on the floor, something inside is still asking how this looks.

Only after this Torah foundation can we turn to psychology, where the strength of the phenomenon becomes clear. Jennifer Crocker and colleagues studied the concept of contingencies of self-worth, the domains on which a person bases a sense of personal value. For one person self-worth may depend on professional achievement, for another on social approval, physical appearance, competition, excellence, or recognition by others. When self-worth becomes strongly tied to a particular domain, success in that domain is not merely pleasant. It becomes evidence that I am worthy. Failure, correspondingly, becomes not simply an event that went badly but a threat to identity itself.

That is why two people can receive exactly the same criticism at work and respond in entirely different ways. The first thinks, “This project was not good enough. I will examine what needs improvement.” The second leaves the room feeling that they themselves are not good enough. For the first, work is something they do. For the second, work has become the courtroom in which the question of personal worth is decided anew every day.

Research on workaholism distinguishes between a person who works long hours out of engagement, love, responsibility, or a sense of mission, and a person who feels an internal compulsive drive to work and cannot put work down even when there is no real need to continue. The difference is not only the number of hours. Two people can work twelve hours a day, but one can finish, go home, and truly be somewhere else, while for the other, work continues inside even after the computer is closed.

Perhaps one of the best questions for examining our relationship with doing is this: what do I feel when I rest? If rest immediately produces guilt, if an hour without output seems “wasted,” if I struggle to enjoy anything without a measurable result, perhaps the problem is not simply that I love to work. Perhaps I learned to feel valuable only while working.

Notice the common phrase, “I wasted two hours.” A person sat with a child, walked with a spouse, drank coffee with an old friend, looked at the sea, or simply sat in the sukkah, and in the end says that the time was wasted. Why? Because there is no product that can be placed on the table to show what came out of those two hours. But perhaps this is one of the great errors of an achievement-oriented culture: we measure every hour by what it produced and forget that some hours are not supposed to produce a product. They are supposed to produce life.

A small child says to his father, “Dad, come sit with me.” The father immediately asks, “What will we do?” The child answers, “Nothing. Just sit.” To an achievement-driven adult, that answer can be almost incomprehensible. If there is no game, no task, no trip, and no goal, what exactly are we doing? But for the child, the sitting itself is the thing. At that moment the child does not need a service from the father. The child needs the father.

There are children who receive almost everything from their parents except this. The father drives, pays, arranges, calls, worries, fixes, buys, and organizes. He does endlessly for the child. But sometimes the child wants a father who does nothing for him, and simply remains with him without looking at the clock and without searching for the next task.

Marriage too can gradually become an excellent management team. Who picks up the child, who calls the doctor, who pays the bill, who shops, who invites the guests for Shabbat, who handles the insurance. The household functions beautifully. But if we remove all the tasks from the room, sometimes we discover that a couple who knows how to manage life together has almost forgotten how to live it together.

They go to a restaurant, and within minutes they are talking about the children. Then the mortgage. Then the repair in the kitchen. Then what must be done tomorrow. They are not fighting. Quite the opposite, they are an excellent team. But when was the last time they sat together without solving anything? When did they laugh? When did they tell each other something with no practical use? When did they simply enjoy the fact that they were together?

The Simchat Beit HaShoevah places before us people who are not solving any problem at that moment. They are not building anything. They are not running a meeting. They are not deciding a dispute. They are singing and dancing before God. There is a time when the very fact of living before God is itself the content.

The point becomes even sharper when a person reaches a period in life in which they truly can no longer do what they once did. A manager retires after forty years. For decades, people waited for his decision. Every morning gave him a clear reason to get up. Suddenly Sunday arrives and there is no office. The phone is quieter. No one is waiting for his signature. At first he enjoys the freedom, but after a few weeks a feeling appears that he did not expect: “Perhaps they no longer need me.”

The question now is not only what he will do in retirement. The question is who he is without the role. If for forty years “I am a manager” was almost identical with “I am a person of value,” retirement is not merely a change in the calendar. It is an earthquake in identity.

The same can happen to a mother who devoted decades to her children. She dreamed that they would grow up, marry, and build homes, and now it has happened. It should be a moment of success. But the house becomes quiet. Once, every hour someone asked her where a shirt was, what there was to eat, who was driving, what they should do. Now everyone manages on their own. Precisely her success as a mother can create a painful question: if they no longer need me the way they once did, what is my place now?

There is an important distinction to make here: being needed and being loved are not the same thing. Being useful and being valuable are not the same thing. A person can be deeply loved even when unable to give anything. A grandfather who can no longer take the grandchildren on outings may be precious to them simply because he is present. A sick person who cannot currently help others does not lose human value. A spouse going through a period in which they receive more than they give does not become a human burden.

It is easy to say these things to other people. It is much harder to believe them when they apply to us.

Some people are able to love someone else in weakness but cannot tolerate themselves when they are weak. They tell a friend, “You do not have to prove anything,” and that same evening feel guilty because they themselves did not accomplish enough.

So we can ask ourselves an uncomfortable but important question: if tomorrow the thing I do best were taken from me, how much of my identity would remain? If I were no longer the manager, the lecturer, the provider, the person everyone calls, the mother everyone needs, the successful professional, or the one who always saves the situation, would I still know who I am?

This is not a call to stop aspiring or doing. Judaism is certainly not a religion of passivity. A person is commanded to act, create, work, study, educate, and change the world. The problem begins when the heart confuses two different sentences: “There is great value in what I do” and “My value depends on what I do.”

The first sentence builds mission.

The second builds anxiety.

Because if my value depends on achievement, I can never truly rest. Even after success I need the next success to confirm again that I am still worthy. The book that was published is exciting for a while, and then another book is needed. The deal that closed already belongs to yesterday. The class that was full does not guarantee that the next class will be full. Applause fades, and therefore another stage is needed.

A person can therefore achieve more and more and feel less and less secure in personal worth, because every achievement becomes not a home in which one can dwell but another dose of approval that must be renewed.

Perhaps this is one of the greatest gifts of the Simchat Beit HaShoevah. The joy is not built around a new personal accomplishment. A person does not say, “Look what I did.” Quite the opposite. The person stands before the One who created them and, for a moment, permits themselves not to be the center.

Perhaps this is also why there is a deep connection between humility and joy. Someone who must defend their image every moment is not truly free to rejoice. The person is occupied with the self: how do I look, what do people think of me, am I important enough, am I receiving the place I deserve? Someone who can set those questions down for a moment becomes available for something else.

They can dance.

They can laugh.

They can be moved by wonder.

They can receive.

They can be small before something greater without feeling that they disappear.

This is not a diminishment of the person. Quite the opposite. It is freedom.

Such a person can also say, “I do not know,” without falling apart. They can allow someone else to lead. They can see a younger person succeed beyond them without feeling that the other person’s success takes something away. They can leave a role and bless the person who enters it. They can sit with a child without turning the encounter into an educational project. They can stand beside someone in pain without rushing to fix them.

Because they do not need to prove in every moment that they are useful.

We can take a simple exercise from this into the festival. Sit in the sukkah once for twenty minutes without doing anything that has an outcome. Do not study in order to complete a quota. Do not check messages. Do not take pictures. Do not plan tomorrow. Simply sit with someone you love, or even alone, and observe what happens inside when there is currently no task.

If after three minutes the hand is searching for the phone, perhaps boredom is not the problem.

Perhaps the silence touched a place that we are accustomed to covering with activity.

We can ask another question: if all my roles were written on slips of paper and I set them down on the table for a moment, what would remain? Not “rabbi,” not “manager,” not “father,” not “mother,” not “lecturer,” not “businessperson,” not “the person everyone needs.” Who is beneath all those titles?

This is not a theoretical question. Life itself asks it of us at some stage. Roles change. Children grow. People retire. Strength diminishes. Workplaces change. Status rises and falls. If we built our entire identity on something temporary, every change threatens to dismantle us.

But a person who knows that doing is an expression of value rather than its only source can work with full strength and still remain free from the work. Such a person can give a great deal without needing everyone to need them all the time. Such a person can succeed without success becoming the only proof of worth. And such a person can also stop.

Perhaps that is why the rejoicing at the water-drawing begins precisely when the day ends. During the day a person can be measured by what was accomplished. At night the list closes. There is nothing more to add to a day that has already passed. Then another question remains: after we have finished doing, do we still know how to rejoice?

The sages describe the greatest scholars dancing that night, and Maimonides calls this joy “a great service.” Perhaps for some people the hardest work is not working one more hour, accepting another responsibility, or carrying another burden. Their great service is agreeing for a moment to set the burden down without feeling that they themselves have been set down with it.

Sukkot does not ask us to become less diligent, less ambitious, or less useful. It asks us to remember one thing before doing becomes our entire identity: we are not only what we accomplished, not only what we built, not only the role we fill, and not only the number of people who need us.

Perhaps that is why the greatest joy of Sukkot bursts forth precisely at night, when the field is quiet, the work is finished, and there is no additional achievement to add to the account. At that moment a person is invited to discover another kind of wealth: not only joy in what one succeeded in producing, but joy in the very privilege of being here, loving, being loved, standing before the Holy One, blessed be He, and living.

For someone who knows only how to do may one day discover that an entire life was built without ever finding the time to live it. Someone who also learns how to be discovers that life is not the reward we receive after all the tasks are finished. Life is what was happening while we were doing them.