What Must Be Yours, and What Must Never Be Only Yours?

Sukkot speaks in two different languages. Regarding the four species the Torah says, “You shall take for yourselves on the first day” (Leviticus 23:40), and the sages derive “for yourselves, from your own.” On the first day a person needs species that legally belong to him (Sukkah 41b). Regarding the sukkah, however, the sages say: “All Israel are fit to sit in one sukkah” (Sukkah 27b), and according to the sages one may fulfill the mitzvah in a borrowed sukkah.

Why must what I hold in my hand be “mine,” while the shelter over my head may be shared?

Perhaps because healthy life requires two forces at once. A person needs an identity of his own. He must know what he believes, what his responsibilities are, what values he stands for and what he cannot simply outsource to other people. One cannot live only from expectations imposed by the surrounding world. Personality cannot be borrowed.

Yet healthy ownership can turn into closure: my house, my money, my time, my opinion, my children, my community. Slowly “mine” stops meaning responsibility and starts meaning wall. A person begins to assume that because something belongs to him he may forget that he belongs to something larger.

The festival teaches balance. The four species are in your hand. You are responsible for your choice, your mitzvah and your personal work. But when you raise your eyes, you sit beneath a space that does not need to be owned by you. The sukkah reminds us that there are forms of belonging larger than ownership.

This is especially true in a family. A spouse must remain a person and not disappear into the relationship. A child must discover who he or she is rather than become a copy of the parents. At the same time, a home cannot become a collection of individuals protecting only their own territory. Relationship requires shared space.

The same is true in community. One can hold a clear position without seeing every disagreement as a threat. One can build a family tradition without closing the door to people who enter it differently. One can succeed without turning life into a contest in which another person’s success takes something away from me.

Perhaps the two mitzvot ask two complementary questions: what in my life has not yet become truly “mine,” because I am still living by other people’s expectations? And what have I made “mine” too aggressively, until there is no room for another person?

Sukkot does not ask us to choose between individuality and community. It gives every person a lulav of his own and places all of us beneath one sukkah. Make what is in your hand truly yours. But when you look upward, remember that there are heavens that do not belong only to you.