Why do we need four different species just after Yom Kippur?
Lulav, etrog, myrtle and willow. The Midrash sees in the four species different kinds of people within Israel and concludes that God says they should be “bound together as one bundle” (Leviticus Rabbah 30:12).
That is a demanding message for the days after Yom Kippur. It is easy to stand in synagogue and ask God to forgive us. It is harder to walk outside and live again with the people who irritate us: the person we disagree with, the neighbor, the relative, the person who thinks differently.
Sukkot says: if you want to draw close to God, learn to hold in one hand people who are not like you. The Torah does not ask the willow to become an etrog. The mitzvah is fulfilled precisely while each species remains itself and yet is held together.
Perhaps the great test of Yom Kippur begins when we leave the synagogue and meet people who have not changed at all. The question is whether something in the way we hold them has changed.