Coming Down From The Summit: Sukkot 5787

This piece by Rabbi Kenigsberg was first posted in Hanassi Highlights, Thursday 25 September 2026. You can also read it in Hebrew, thanks to ChatGPT, here.

In 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Or were they? Almost thirty years earlier, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine had disappeared while attempting the same climb. They were last seen at base camp near the summit. To this day, no one knows with certainty whether they reached the summit before they died.

When Hillary was asked how he felt knowing that two other climbers may have beaten him to the top, he reportedly replied: “I don’t know if we were first to reach the top of the mountain. What I do know is that we were the first to reach the top, and come back down!”

Reaching the summit is only half the challenge. You also have to know how to come back down. Perhaps that is exactly the challenge we face as we move from Yom Kippur into Sukkot.

On Yom Kippur, we ascend. For twenty-five hours we leave ordinary physical life behind. We do not eat or drink. We spend our day in shul, attempting, as far as humanly possible, to live like angels. We reach upwards towards Heaven. But we cannot remain there.

Shlomo Yosef Zevin draws a beautiful contrast between Yom Kippur and Sukkot through two elements: fire and water. Fire naturally rises upwards; water flows downwards. Yom Kippur is the day of fire. At the heart of the Avodah, the Kohen Gadol enters the Kodesh HaKodashim with burning coals and incense. Sukkot, by contrast, is a festival saturated with water: the arba minim depend upon water, we begin praying for rain, and in the Beit HaMikdash there was the joyous Simchat Beit HaSho’eva and the water libation.

Yom Kippur takes us upwards. Sukkot brings holiness back down to earth. This idea  is reflected further in the mitzvah of the sukkah itself. We do not enter the sukkah primarily to pray or study. The mitzvah is teshvu ke’ein taduru -- live there as you normally live. We eat, drink, talk and sleep. Rather than abstain from the physical world, as we did on Yom Kippur, on Sukkot our involvement with the physical world itself becomes mitzvah. The goal, then, was never to remain on the summit.

Sukkot asks whether we can bring the summit home with us -- whether the holiness we encountered on Yom Kippur can enter our meals, our homes, our relationships and our everyday lives. We have reached upwards towards Heaven. Now comes the challenge of bringing Heaven back down to earth.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach!