Taking Leave of the Sukkah -- and the Sukkah of the Leviathan

In this post, Rabbi Paul Bloom fastens on to our farewell to the temporary home that has accommodated us for the past week. What should we be thinking? What is the takeaway message from our poignant parting?

Today, on Hoshanah Rabbah, we reach the spiritual crescendo of the festival of Sukkot. Soon we will transition into Shemini Atzeret, the day that symbolizes Hashem’s special closeness to His people — “ָשָׁה עָלַי פְּרִידַתְכֶםק”, “Your separation is difficult for Me.”

And yet, even before we take leave of the festival, there is a tender custom — recorded by the Rema — to say a Yehi Ratzon upon leaving the sukkah:

נהגו לומר כשנפטר מן הסוכה:
 יהי רצון מלפניך ה' אלקי ואלקי אבותי
 כשם שקיימתי וישבתי בסוכה זו,
 כן אזכה בשנה הבאה לישב בסוכת עורו של לויתן

“May it be Your will, Hashem our God and God of our fathers,
 that just as I have fulfilled the mitzvah and dwelt in this sukkah,
 so may I merit next year to dwell in the sukkah of the Leviathan.”

This is remarkable. We do not recite a similar farewell after other mitzvot. We do not say goodbye to the shofar, nor to the lulav, nor even to matzah. Only the sukkah receives this parting prayer. Why?

Rav Yitzchak Hutner (Pachad Yitzchak, Sukkos 27) uncovers the reason. The Torah commands us on the festivals to appear before Hashem “in the place which He will choose.” Regarding Pesach and Shavuot, the Torah specifies: “in the place where Hashem rests His Name” — the Beit HaMikdash in Yerushalayim. But regarding Sukkot, the Torah omits that phrase. He notes that when the Torah speaks about the pilgrimage festivals, it says:

שָׁלֹשׁ פְּעָמִים בַּשָּׁנָה יֵרָאֶה כָל זְכוּרְךָ
 אֶת פְּנֵי ה' אֱלֹקֶיךָ
 בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחָר
 (דברים ט״ז:ט״ז)

Pesach

וְזָבַחְתָּ פֶּסַח לַה' אֱלֹקֶיךָ צֹאן וּבָקָר
 בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחַר ה' לְשַׁכֵּן שְׁמוֹ שָׁם
(דברים ט״ז:ב׳)

כִּי אִם אֶל הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחַר ה' אֱלֹקֶיךָ
 לְשַׁכֵּן שְׁמוֹ שָׁם תִּזְבַּח אֶת הַפֶּסַח
(שם ו׳)

Shavuot

וְשָׂמַחְתָּ לִפְנֵי ה' אֱלֹקֶיךָ
 בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחַר ה' אֱלֹקֶיךָ לְשַׁכֵּן שְׁמוֹ שָׁם

(דברים ט״ז:י״א)

By Pesach and Shavuot, the Torah adds:

בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחַר ה' לְשַׁכֵּן שְׁמוֹ שָׁם

 “the place where Hashem rests His Name.”

But by Sukkot, that phrase is missing. Why?  Rav Hutner explains: because on Sukkot, the Shechinah does not dwell solely in Yerushalayim. Every Jew’s sukkah becomes a Mikdash me’at — a miniature Temple — a dwelling for the Divine Presence. Hashem leaves His Palace and comes to dwell with His people in their fragile huts.

Thus, the sukkah itself becomes a Yerushalayim, a sanctuary in time and space. And just as one who visited Yerushalayim for the festivals was required to remain overnight — mitzvat lina — and take leave with reverence, so too do we bid farewell to our sukkah with a blessing and a prayer.

We do not simply step out. We say goodbye. We whisper: “Just as I sat beneath this shade, may I merit to sit beneath the shade of the Leviathan.”

The Sukkah of the Leviathan: A Glimpse of the Future

But what is this Sukkah of the Leviathan?

In the Gemara in Bava Batra 75a, Rabbah quotes Rabbi Yochanan’s description of two wondrous scenes of the World to Come:

עָתִיד הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לַעֲשׂוֹת סְעוּדָה לַצַּדִּיקִים מִבְּשָׂרוֹ שֶׁל לִוְיָתָן

עָתִיד הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לַעֲשׂוֹת סוּכָּה לַצַּדִּיקִים מֵעוֹרוֹ שֶׁל לִוְיָתָן

In the future, the Holy One, Blessed be He, will make a feast for the righteous from the flesh of the leviathan…

In the future, the Holy One, Blessed be He, will prepare a sukkah for the righteous from the skin of the leviathan

This is no simple fable. It is a vision — aggadah — teaching us deep truths about spiritual reward and the nature of closeness to God.

The Leviathan, the great sea creature, represents the most hidden of God’s creations — "לויתן זה יצרת לשחק בו” (Tehillim 104:26), “You created the Leviathan to play with.” The Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 7:4) explains that Leviathan symbolizes the joy of divine play, the overflowing abundance of God’s creative energy.

In the world as we know it, that spiritual light is too vast for us to contain. The Leviathan must remain hidden beneath the sea — the realm of the concealed. But in the future, when the world is purified and humanity refined, the hidden will become revealed, and we will be able to “feast” upon that light — to draw nourishment from the very mysteries of creation.

The skin of the Leviathan — its outer covering — represents the vessel that contains that great spiritual energy. Hashem will fashion from it a sukkah — a canopy of light — to shelter the righteous. It will be a dwelling of pure Divine radiance, a structure not of wood and branches but of spiritual comprehension, where every soul will bask in God’s Presence.

The Zohar calls this the “צִלָּא דְּמְהֵימְנוּתָא” — “the shade of faith.” Our earthly sukkah, built of simple materials, is a rehearsal for that ultimate sukkah. When we sit under the s’chach, we dwell in the “shadow of faith,” acknowledging that all security comes from Hashem. But in the future, when faith becomes sight, the temporary shade will give way to eternal illumination — the sukkah of the Leviathan.

Thus, when we take leave of our sukkah, we are not merely stepping out of a hut — we are stepping toward eternity. We say, “Ribono Shel Olam — let this experience not fade. Transform the fragile shade of this sukkah into the everlasting shelter of Your Presence.”

The Farewell and the Promise

Leaving the sukkah is bittersweet.  All week, we have lived surrounded by holiness — our meals, our songs, our prayers wrapped in sanctity. And now we must return to the ordinary world. Like those who once left Yerushalayim, our hearts whisper, “קָשָׁה עָלַי פְּרִידַתְכֶם— the separation is hard.”

Yet we leave with hope. For every moment inside the sukkah has eternal value. Every song we sang, every guest we welcomed, every word of Torah spoken — all of it builds the walls of that future sukkah above.

When we say Yehi Ratzon, we are not uttering a poetic line — we are expressing faith. Faith that history moves toward redemption. Faith that the fragile branches of today will one day become the shining canopy of tomorrow.

And so, as we step from the sukkah into the world, we carry its light with us. We have tasted the joy of Divine protection, the sweetness of trust. And we pray that soon —בִּמְהֵרָה בְּיָמֵינוּ — we will once again dwell, together with all of Israel, “בְּסֻכַּת שְׁלוֹמֶךָ,” in the Sukkah of peace — the Sukkah of the Leviathan, radiant with the light of the Shechinah.

Farewell, Sukkah!

An innovation at Beit Knesset Hanassi this Sukkot was Rabbi Kenigsberg's introduction of a short, sweet "Farewell to the Sukkah". Before taking our leave of the shul Sukkah, we had a bite to eat, sang some songs and said a couple of short divrei Torah. The following was said over by Jeremy Phillips:

If you carefully read our davening schedule, you will have seen an item that reads “Farewell to the Sukkah 5.15 pm”. Opposite this item, on the Ivrit side of the timetable, this event is listed as “Shalom leSukkah”. But even to say anything at all might seem a bit irregular to those of us who are 21st century rationalists. For one thing, even the most beautiful of Sukkot is an inanimate object: you can say hello or goodbye to it if you like, though it won’t hear you. You can tell it whatever you like but you won’t get a response. You may as well be talking to a brick wall (parenthetically, we learn from the very first daf of masechet Sukkah that there’s no problem with a Sukkah having brick walls, so long as it does not exceed 20 amot in height).

Another strange thing about saying goodbye to the Sukkah is the unique nature of this custom. After all, we don’t say goodbye to the shofar when we’re finished with blowing it; we don’t say goodbye to the arba minim either. Nor, on Pesach, do we bid farewell to the matzah—though to be honest I think the parting of the ways between man and matzah is often greeted with more relief than grief.

Well, actually, there is no problem because, in point of fact, we don’t really say goodbye to it at all. Both the Rinat Yisrael and the ArtScroll machzorim describe this little ceremony in Hebrew not as a farewell but as a Yetziah, an exit. And the function of the text of the yehi ratzon which we recite is not to say goodbye to the Sukkah, but to remind God that we have notched up some serious brownie points for performing the mitzvah of living in the Sukkah and to ask that these self-same brownie points be carried forward into the year we only recently commenced.

Some machzorim follow the yehi ratzon with a kabbalistic paragraph, ribona de’alma, which likewise focuses not on the past week but on the year that lies ahead. In it we ask God to let the angels that we have created during the Chag through our performance of the mitzvot of Sukkah and the arba minim accompany us on our return to normal life. We then ask God if He would be so kind as to let the aforesaid angels help protect us from sin and from sha’ot hamitragshot – malevolent moments – that are likely to occur, and not to punish us for our misdemeanours before we’ve had a chance to repent for them ourselves.

So, all on all, this alleged farewell to the Sukkah is really a forward-facing strategy for dealing with our return to what we like to call our normality.

Having said all this, it seems to me that saying goodbye to the Sukkah is a good thing to do, since it is a way of showing respect to the departing Chag. In light of this, I’d like to make reference to a Mishnah from Avot:

רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר הַמּוּדָעִי אוֹמֵר: הַמְחַלֵּל אֶת הַקֳּדָשִׁים, וְהַמְבַזֶּה אֶת הַמּוֹעֲדוֹת, וְהַמַּלְבִּין פְּנֵי חֲבֵרוֹ בָּרַבִּים, וְהַמֵּפֵר בְּרִיתוֹ שֶׁל אַבְרָהָם אָבִֽינוּ, וְהַמְגַלֶּה פָנִים בַּתּוֹרָה שֶׁלֹּא כַהֲלָכָה, אַף עַל פִּי שֶׁיֵּשׁ בְּיָדוֹ תּוֹרָה וּמַעֲשִׂים טוֹבִים, אֵין לוֹ חֵֽלֶק לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

Rabbi Elazar HaModa’i used to say: One who profanes the kadashim ("holy things"), degrades the Festivals, humiliates his friend in public, nullifies the covenant of our father Abraham, or who interprets the Torah contrary to its true intent---although he may possess Torah knowledge and good deeds, he has no share in the World to Come.

What does ‘hamevazeh et hamo’adot’ really mean? How does one cheapen or degrade a festival? According to many commentaries, following in the footsteps of the Bartenura, this means being insufficiently respectful to Chol HaMoed. How do we know this? One of our own local commentators—Rabbi Menachem Mordechai Frankel-Teomim (who lived down the road at no.2, rechov HaShla)-- explains that, if the word mo’adim means the yamim tovim themselves, the feminine form of the word—mo’adot—refers to a gentler sort of mo’ed, which is Chol HaMoed.

For us, not just sitting down in the Sukkah for the occasional snack but, ideally, living in it full-time, is the main mitzvah of Chol HaMoed, a mitzvah we can even fulfil when we are fast asleep. This being so, it is surely appropriate to acknowledge its importance by leaving it in an appropriately respectful manner. More than that, we should be very careful not to denigrate it. As the Midrash Shmuel points out, any form of disrespect to Chol HaMoed has potentially disastrous consequences: if you don’t respect its integrity in this world, you don’t deserve to be respected in Olam HaBo, the world to come.