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The Book of Leviticus – ‫חומש ויקרא‬

Torah Portion Emor

At the conclusion of the Torah portion of Emor, the Torah tells us about all the
holidays of the year, and among them the holiday of Passover and the holiday of
Succot.

On the holiday of Passover, on Seder night, the Children of Israel celebrate
inside their house, like on the other holidays. The children sit with the family,
with pillows on the chairs in order to feel the feeling of liberated people – the
liberation from the exile.

On the holiday of Succot, the Children of Israel go out of their permanent
houses and celebrate the holiday in commemoration of the huts and the Clouds
of Glory that the Children of Israel had in the desert – inside a temporary hut.
The people transfer the furniture into the temporary hut: the tables, the chairs,
the beds and the pretty household items.
It looks very strange…

But specifically on the holiday of Passover the children ask the questions:
"Why is this night different from all other nights…?"

Once the governor of the city of Berlin was invited to the Succah of the rabbi of
the city, R' Tzvi Hirsch Levin, and asked him, "How is it that the children do not
ask the questions on the holiday of Succot when the Jews leave the nice
permanent house for a small, temporary house, but rather on Passover, when
everyone stays in the permanent house?"

The rabbi answered him: Jewish children live all the time with the feeling of a
temporary house, because all the time there are decrees of expulsion and
uprooting of Jews from the place of their settlement. Therefore, for a Jewish
child it is not new and not strange when they leave the spacious house and move
to a small hut.

But on Passover the Jewish child finds himself together with all the family
sitting like liberated people without worries. Specifically then the child asks:
"Why is this night different…" – are we really liberated people already, and the
end to the exile has arrived, the end to expulsion and our suffering?

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