In the Yom Tov of Sukkos, we have mainly two special mitzvot. One mitzvah is the netilah of ד׳ מינים, the taking of the four kinds, of the etrog and the lulav and the hadasim and the aravot, and then we have another mitzvah, the mitzvah of ישיבה בסוכה, the mitzvah of sitting in the sukkah. Nevertheless, we see that the name of the Yom Tov is not חג ד׳ מינים, the Yom Tov of the four kinds, or not חג האתרוג, חג הלולב, etc., but חג הסוכות, the Yom Tov of the Sukkos, which means that we stress the fact that we have to sit in the sukkah more than the mitzvah of taking the ד׳ מינים. Obviously, this shows that there is something special in the mitzvah of sitting in the sukkah even more than the mitzvah of taking the ד׳ מינים. L'chora, what is so special in this mitzvah more than the mitzvah of taking the ד׳ מינים? They're both special mitzvot of this Yom Tov, so then, or let's call it with a neutral name which will not be any of the two, or let's call it with a name that will include both, but why call it davka with Sukkos? Obviously, there is something special in this mitzvah of sukkah. One of the simple reasons is because there is a maalah in sitting in the sukkah over the mitzvah of taking the four minim, because the mitzvah of Sukkos is connected to all days of the Yom Tov, from the first moment when the Yom Tov starts till the end of the Yom Tov, but the mitzvah of arba minim, so it was only on the first day mid'Oraita. Mid'Oraita, outside of the Beit HaMikdash, you only had to take the four kinds on the first day of Yom Tov, as the pasuk says, ולקחתם לכם ביום הראשון, that on the first day of Yom Tov you have to take all these four kinds, but the other six days of Yom Tov, you didn't have to take the arba minim. Only in the Beit HaMikdash, there they had to take the arba minim all days of Sukkos. We take it now also all days of Sukkos miderabbanan, but that's not mid'Oraita. So, this is one reason why the Yom Tov is called Chag HaSukkos, because the whole Yom Tov is connected to the mitzvah of sukkah, but not concerning the arba minim. Also, the mitzvah of arba minim has a limit, that even when you do take arba minim, the moment you took it and you were mekayem the mitzvah of נטילת ד׳ מינים, so you don't have to do it again anymore. But the mitzvah of sukkah has no limit. You have to live in the sukkah for all days of the Yom Tov of Sukkos. As the pasuk says, תשבו בסוכות, you have to sit in the sukkah seven days, and the Gemara says, תשבו כעין תדורו, you have to sit there, you have to stay there like you live there, which means during the days of Sukkos, you have to live in the sukkah. And therefore, the Yom Tov is called Sukkos, not the mitzvah of arba minim, because arba minim you only take once a day and you are yotzei the mitzvah, and you are not obligated to take it anymore, but concerning the sukkah, you are obligated to live in the sukkah throughout the whole Yom Tov.

But then there is more to it than that. This is just בגשמיות, physically, a maalah in the mitzvah of sukkah over ד׳ מינים, that first of all, it is more in time, it's seven days m'd'oraita, not just one day as the ד׳ מינים. Also, within the time when you do have to fulfill the mitzvot, the mitzvah of ד׳ מינים is only once, and the mitzvah of sukkah is constant. But there is more to it. There is something else that's special in the mitzvah of sukkah that we don't find in the mitzvah of ד׳ מינים, and we don't find it in any other mitzvah. And that is that this is a mitzvah that the whole person goes into. Every mitzvah that a person does, you do it with a certain part of your body. The mitzvah of tzedakah you do with your hand. The mitzvah of tefillin you do with your hand, your hand puts on the tefillin on the other hand. The mitzvah of learning Torah is done with your mouth, it's done with your head that you understand it. The truth is that it says כל עצמותי תאמרנה, that all the bones, the whole body has to get involved in every mitzvah. So that is true, that you have to try to put yourself completely into the mitzvah, but nevertheless, the קיום המצוה, the fulfillment of the mitzvah, is with a certain part of the body. But the mitzvah of sukkah is that the person, the whole person, everything of him should go into the sukkah, into the mitzvah of sukkah. The din is that you have to have ראשו ורובו, your head and the majority of the body has to go into the sukkah in order to fulfill the mitzvah of sukkah, that means that the whole person goes in. And when the whole person goes in, this includes not only the body of the person, this includes even the clothes that the person wears, which means this is a mitzvah that surrounds, takes around the whole person, even the clothes of the person. But there is another mitzvah which is similar to that, and that is the mitzvah of talit, that when you put on a talit, you fulfill the mitzvah of tzitzit, you're מתעטף בציצית, you wrap yourself around with tzitzit, the din is also that you have to wrap around most of the body with the talit, which includes also the clothes of the person, because when you put the talit on, you put it over your clothes. But there is still a difference between the mitzvah of sukkah and the mitzvah of talit. The shiur of a talit is six tefachim. Why? Because then the majority of the person could be wrapped around with a talit. The shiur of a sukkah is that the minimum shiur is ז' tefachim, seven tefachim. Why? So it says so that the majority of the person should be able to go in, plus שולחנו, six tefachim for the person, and one tefach for his table. Since you have to eat in the sukkah, so you have to have a table to put your food on, so the table is also included in the shiur of a sukkah. So we see that by sukkah it's even more than by talit. By talit it surrounds the whole person. By the sukkah it surrounds the person with his table, with his food. Now we know that the food of a person represents the whole life of the person because a person lives through his food. So when we say that a sukkah surrounds the person completely, including his table where he is going to eat on, that means that the whole person is involved in the mitzvah. And that's why the Yom Tov is called Chag HaSukkot, because the special mitzvah that we have in this Yom Tov is the mitzvah of sukkah, a mitzvah that a person goes in completely: with his whole body, with his clothes, with his table, even with his shoes, because when you go into the sukkah you're going with your shoes. And if a person happened to walk into mud, and his shoe is full of mud, he walks into the mitzvah, into the sukkah, with his shoes, with the mud on the shoes. This shows how strong the mitzvah is, that it encompasses, it surrounds the whole person.

Then there is more to it: The Gemara says in Yevamot דף ס\"ג עמוד א', \"כל אדם שאין לו קרקע אינו אדם.\" A person who doesn't own land is not a person. And Tosafot says it doesn't just mean land, it means land לבנות עליו בית, to build a house on it, which in essence means that a person who doesn't have a house is not a person, which means that the house a person lives in, that makes the adam into an adam, that makes the person into a person. Now all year round, when a person lives in a regular house, so the person becomes an adam, a person through his house that he lives in. Since during סוכות, תשבו כעין תדורו, you have to live in the sukkah, so the sukkah is the בית of the person. So then what makes the person into a person? The sukkah that he lives in. So it comes out that this mitzvah of sukkah is not just a mitzvah that you do with a certain part of your body, not just a mitzvah that you go into with the whole body, but this is a mitzvah that makes the person into a person. During the week of Sukkos, the adam is an adam, the person is a person. Why? Because he has a sukkah, because he lives in a house, and his house during Sukkos is the sukkah. So this mitzvah had such a great an effect on the person, it actually it causes the person to be a person. It affects the essence of the person, meaning that the person is a person during Sukkos because of the mitzvah of sukkah.

Then there is another specialty in the mitzvah of sukkah: Every mitzvah that we do, the act is an act of a mitzvah. The act is not an act that we do for our physical well-being; it is an act of a mitzvah. For instance, when we put on tefillin, there is no physical reason why we should put on tefillin, but we do it because it's a mitzvah. When we give tzedakah, for our well-being, begashmiyus we don't have to give tzedakah, we do it because it's a mitzvah. And the same with every mitzvah: when we hear shofar on Rosh Hashanah, there is no reason to hear shofar on Rosh Hashanah, but because it's a mitzvah. Even on Pesach, when we eat matzah, so there is a reason why we have to eat because begashmiyus we have to eat food, but nevertheless, the food that we eat is a special kind of food that we eat because of the mitzvah. We eat matzah because there is a mitzvah to eat matzah. Sukkos, we do everything as we would do it normally. The difference is in which place we do it, but the act itself is a normal act. Whenever a person decides he wants to eat, the same as he would eat in the middle of the year, and he has to eat because his body needs the food, when he does it in the sukkah, so then this is a mitzvah of sukkah. So the mitzvah is not just an act of a mitzvah, but the mitzvah is that when you do your own physical needs, it turns into a mitzvah. This is really the general concept of כל מעשיך יהיו לשם שמים, that it says in Pirkei Avot, that whatever we do has to be l'shem Shamayim. And it doesn't mean that we should only do mitzvot. The expression is כל מעשיך, all your actions, meaning when you do something of your own, something that's for your own physical benefit, for your own physical well-being, it should be done l'shem Shamayim. Or as the pasuk says in Mishlei קפיטל ג' פסוק ו', \"בכל דרכיך דעהו\", \"in all your ways you should know Him,\" meaning not only should you do the דרכי השם, the ways of Hashem which are mitzvot, but when you do your own ways, which means when you do all your physical things, like when you eat and you sleep and you do business, etc., דעהו, you should know Hashem. This is expressed in the mitzvah of sukkah, that when we eat, or when we drink, or when we go for a walk, or when we go to sleep, when we do the same thing in the sukkah, this turns into a mitzvah. And this is even more than we have concerning Shabbos. We know that on שבת מצוה לענג לענגו באכילה ושתיה, it's a mitzvah to have pleasure from Shabbos, from food. So when you eat food and the food tastes good and you enjoy it, so during the year if you enjoy the food then it is not a mitzvah at all, on the contrary, it might be considered a ta'avah, that it's a physical desire that comes from your yetzer hara, but if you do it on Shabbos, so then this is a mitzvah. So in this way it is similar to what sukkah is. But on Shabbos it's only concerning the eating of the food, but on Sukkos, since it's תשבו כעין תדורו, you have to live there, so whatever you do as part of your daily life, if you do it in the sukkah you are fulfilling a mitzvah. So that actually shows that a person's life all day long and whatever he does is for the sake of Hashem, is a mitzvah. So even though Sukkos is only seven days of the year, but this gives us the koach and gives us the remez, the hint, and the horaah, the lesson, that this is how we're supposed to act all year round, that whatever we do for our own physical needs should also be considered like a mitzvah because we do it l'shem Shamayim and we have the concept of דעהו. And this is something that's expressed in the mitzvah of sukkah. So from all this we see that mitzvah of sukkah is a very special mitzvah.

On the other hand, the Gemara in Avodah Zarah דף ג' עמוד א' refers to the mitzvah of sukkah as a מצוה קלה, as an easy mitzvah. And this is also for a reason. This comes to show us that even though we might be doing the greatest mitzvah, and we would expect that the greatest mitzvah should be the hardest to do, and sometimes the greatest mitzvah is the hardest to do, nevertheless, we always have to look upon it as a מצוה קלה, as an easy mitzvah. Because if we really want to do what Hashem wants us to do, we have the koach from Hashem to do it and really it's easy to do, even though it seems hard, but it's definitely easy. As the Gemara says there in Avodah Zarah דף ג' עמוד א', that אין הקדוש ברוך הוא בא בטרוניא עם בריותיו. Hashem doesn't come with a bilbul, as Rashi says, with an alilah, with trouble to His creatures. If He asks them to do something, obviously they're able to do it. And as it says in Midrash Rabbah in Shemot פרשה ל״ד, that אין הקדוש ברוך הוא בא בטירחא עם בריותיו. Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn't come with a tircha to His people. לא בא על האדם אלא לפי כוחו. He only comes to a person according to the person's ability. And therefore, if Hashem wants us to do a mitzvah, then definitely we are able to do it and it is not hard. And it's understood by itself also, because just like a person will not expect from somebody to do something that he knows he's not able to do it, just like a person will not expect from a machine that he made to perform in a way that he never put into the machine, just like by a computer, you can't expect the computer to give out information if you didn't feed it in, the same is certainly l'havdil kivyachol concerning Hashem. Hashem certainly will not expect us to do something that He didn't put into us when He created us. So if He tells us to do a certain mitzvah, as hard as it may seem to be, He definitely put in the koach within us that we should be able to do it. And this is what the mitzvah of sukkah teaches us. On the one hand, the mitzvah of sukkah is a very, very great mitzvah. It's a mitzvah that surrounds the whole person, it's a mitzvah that makes the person into a person, it's a mitzvah that makes all your physical acts that you do for your own physical needs into a mitzvah. So it sounds like the greatest mitzvah. And at the same time, we say that this greatest mitzvah is a מצוה קלה, is an easy mitzvah, to teach us that the hardest and the strongest and the greatest mitzvot are all easy to do, because if Hashem wants us to do it, then definitely we are able to do it.

Then there is something else in the sukkah. It says in sefarim that the sechach of the sukkah, that is a המשך, a continuation of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The word sechach is made up of three letters: ס, כ, כ. ס is the gematria, the numerical value of ס is 60, of כ is 20, and the other one is 20, together it's 100. So this is to remind us of the 100 kolot of shofar that were blown on Rosh Hashanah. And the 100 kolot that were blown on Rosh Hashanah were divided into 60 תקיעות, 20 תרועות, and 20 שברים. So sechach is made up of the three letters: ס which is 60, and כ 20, and other כ 20. So here we see how the sechach of the sukkah, which is the main part of the sukkah, is a continuation of Rosh Hashanah. Also is it a continuation of Yom Kippur, because it says that the sechach of the sukkah comes as a result of the ענן הקטורת, of the cloud of קטורת that became in the קדש הקדשים through the avodah of the kohen gadol on Yom Kippur. Because when the kohen gadol used to walk into the קדש הקדשים, his avodah was to bring the ketoret, and it was supposed to go up as a cloud. So it says this cloud is later on נמשך, becomes, so to speak spiritually, the schach of the sukkah. That means that what we're supposed to accomplish on Rosh Hashanah and then on Yom Kippur, could still be accomplished on Sukkos through the sukkah. So whatever we explain concerning the mitzvah of shofar, how great it is, and what it accomplishes, And what it does, which is very, very great as it's explained in sefarim. Certainly, whatever is explained concerning the avodah on Yom Kippur, which was done through the kohen gadol in the קודש הקדשים through the ענן הקטורת, which is definitely a very, very great, high avodah, we, by sitting in the sukkah, can accomplish that, too, because by sitting in the sukkah, we connect ourselves to the kolot of the shofar and to the ענן הקטורת of Yom Kippur. And this is one of the reasons why the Yom Tov of Sukkos is זמן שמחתנו, the time of our joy, of our happiness, because a person cannot be happier than if he's able to fulfill the mitzvah of sukkah, which represents such great inyanim, all the different inyanim that we mentioned before. This is supposed to awaken in a person the greatest simchah, because when a person realizes what great thing he is accomplishing, and what's happening through this great mitzvah, this is supposed to awaken in a person the greatest simchah. Just like bichlal we say, why is it so important to have simchah shel mitzvah, to be happy with a mitzvah? Because this shows that you really appreciate what the mitzvah is. If a person does a mitzvah because it's a burden, and he just knows he has to do it because Hashem told him to, but he'd really not like to do it, he wouldn't be happy about it. When is a person happy? If he realizes that this is so great, and he accomplishes so much, so he appreciates it, he's happy. So that's why when a person has simchah shel mitzvah, it shows that he really understands what the mitzvah is and he appreciates it. The greater the mitzvah is, the more appreciation you should have, so the greater simchah you should have. So when it comes to Sukkos, and a Yid is able to sit in the sukkah, and accomplish all these different things that we mentioned before, this should arouse in the person the greatest simchah. And that's why Sukkos is called zman simchateinu, the time of our simchah, because that's the time when a Yid shows his appreciation for being able to accomplish so much through this mitzvah of sukkah. And it's self-understood that it works both ways. When we show Hashem how much we appreciate this great mitzvah of sukkah, and we are happy with it, then Hashem shows His simchah to us, that He is happy and appreciates what we do. And that is one of the meanings in the words zman simchateinu, as it says in sefarim, the time of our simchah. Now, pashut pshat means our simchah, ours of all the Yidden, but there is another pshat, zman simchateinu, our simchah, meaning ours, our side, which is the Yid's side, and Hashem's side. Hashem is happy with us, and we are happy with Hashem. And we could imagine, if Hashem is happy with us, then definitely He gives us everything that we need, and therefore He gives us for sure a gmar chatimah tovah u'shanah tovah u'metukah for all ענינים בגשמיות וברוחניות.