23 Sep WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH ANOTHER YEAR?

Imagine for a moment
that your heart stops
beating. There is no
pulse, no breath, and
suddenly you are no
longer in control of
what happens next. A
woman in our
community experienced exactly that when,
while out at a birthday dinner, she suddenly
collapsed and her heart completely stopped.
The restaurant called an ambulance and,
miraculously, while they were waiting for
help, her heart started beating again, but
when she arrived at the hospital, she flatlined
and literally died. Her husband stood there
terrified and helpless, with nothing he could
do medically, so he began to daven with an
intensity he had never felt before. He had
said the words countless times, but never
like this, never with his wife’s life hanging in
the balance, as he begged Hashem to be
.life to back dead the bring to ְ,מְַחֵַּיּה ֵמִֵתִים
Baruch Hashem, after what must have felt
like an eternity, her heart began to beat again.
Today, she is alive and well, with a
pacemaker and a completely different
perspective on life, thinking often about how
easily the story could have ended differently.
It could have happened while she was
driving, she could have been alone, or she
could have been somewhere without
immediate help, but instead Hashem gave
her another chance. People who go through
something like that often divide their lives
into two periods: everything that came
before the experience and everything that
came after, because they don’t, they can’t,
simply recover from something like that. In
some sense they are reborn. Perhaps that is
exactly how we are supposed to feel on
Sukkos.
ּוְלְַקְַח ּ ְֶּתם ָלֶָכֶם- ַּבּּיֹום ,-us tells Torah The
ָהִָרִאׁשֹון ְּפִּרִי ֵעֵץ- ָהָָדָר ַּכֹּּפּת- ְּתָּמִָרִים ַו ֲַעֲַנַף- ֵעֵץ
ָעָֹבֹת- ְוְַעְַרְֵבֵי ָנַָחַל- ּוְׂש ַ ַׂמְח ּ ְֶּתם ִלְִפְֵנֵי- ה‘ ֱאֱֹלֹקיֶכֶם-
יםִמִָיָ תַעַבְׁשְִׁ . We don’t simply pick up a lulav
and esrog, we shake them and move them in
every direction. The Rambam describes
bringing the arba minim forward and back,
up and down, again and again, and there is a
noticeable energy and movement to this
mitzvah that begs the question of what
exactly we are expressing and why we
express it specifically now.
The Rosh, Avudraham, and Beis Yosef point
us to a Midrash Tanchuma that explains that
on Rosh Hashanah we stand in judgment and
don’t yet know the outcome, but when
Sukkos arrives, we emerge holding our
lulavim like someone walking out of a
courtroom having received a favorable
verdict. According to this image, the lulav is
a symbol of victory, and there is certainly
something powerful and compelling about
that idea, particularly after the intensity of

the Yamim Noraim. And yet, there is also
something about it that has always bothered
me. Is that really how we should emerge
from our days of literal awe, Rosh Hashanah
and Yom Kippur, triumphantly celebrating
that we won and publicly displaying the
favorable judgment we received?
There is another Midrash that offers a very
different image, one that I find incredibly
A “ְ,וְַעַם ִנִ ְְבָרָא ְיְַהֶַּלּל ָיָּה ,says Tehillim .moving
nation that has been created will praise
Hashem,” and Vayikra Rabbah explains, וּלֵּאֵ
ּ-דֹורֹות- ַַהָּלּלּו ֶׁשֵׁהֵם- ְנְטּוִיִין ְלְִמִיָתָה,- ְוְַעַם ִנִ ְְבָרָא
ְיְַהֶַּלּל קּה, ֶׁשַׁהַָּקּדֹוׁש ָּבּרּוְך הּוא- ָעִָתִיד ִלִ ְְבראֹות-
אֹוָתָן ְּבִּרִָּיּה- ֲחֲָדָָׁשׁה, ּוֶמֶה- ָעֵָלֵינּו ַלֲַעֲׂשֹות,- ִלִַּקּח
These .לּוָלָבְ-וְֶאֶ ְְתרֹוג ּוְנְַקֵַּלּס- ְלְַהַָּקּדֹוׁש ָּבּרּוְך- הּוא
are people who were destined for death and
Hashem creates them anew, and what are
they supposed to do after receiving this new
life? They take a lulav and esrog and praise
Hashem.
According to this Midrash, the lulav isn’t a
victory flag at all, it is what you hold when
you realize you have just been given your
life back. Think about what we have just
experienced on Yom Kippur, which in so
many ways is a dress rehearsal for death.
Men wear a kittel, the garment in which they
will one day be buried. We say vidui just as a
person does at the end of life. We don’t eat or
drink, and we remove ourselves from
physical pleasure and comfort. For one day,
we try to transcend our bodies and live
almost entirely as souls, not because Judaism
is obsessed with dying, but precisely because
it is obsessed with living, and sometimes we
need to confront death in order to appreciate
life.
Then Yom Kippur ends, and we eat again,
drink again, build a sukkah, pick up the
daled minim, sing, dance and celebrate
because our heartbeat has come back.
Sukkos is the celebration of another chance,
another year, and another opportunity to get
it right. The joy of Sukkos isn’t only that we
were inscribed for life, it is the realization
that life itself has been handed back to us.
There is even a remarkable Halachic
expression of this idea. The Gemara in
Berachos says that if you haven’t seen a
friend for thirty days, under the appropriate
circumstances you recite Shehechiyanu, but
if you haven’t seen someone for twelve
ָּ,בּרּוְך ְמְַחֵַּיּה ַה ּ ֵַּמִתִים recite you ,months
Blessed is the One Who revives the dead. At
first glance, that sounds a little dramatic,
because while it is certainly wonderful to see
someone you haven’t seen in a year, why
should that reunion invoke the resurrection
of the dead?
The Maharsha gives an extraordinary
explanation. If twelve months have passed,
then since the last time you saw this person,
he has gone through another Rosh Hashanah

and another Yom
Kippur, stood in
judgment again and
passed through another
When .מי יחיה ומי ימות
you see him now, you
aren’t simply seeing an
old friend whom you
haven’t seen in a while,
you are looking at
someone who has been
given life again, and
ְמְַחֵַּיּה ַה ּ ֵַּמִתִים why is that
is precisely the
appropriate beracha.
Perhaps that is how we
are supposed to look at
one another after Yom Kippur, and perhaps
that is also how we should look at ourselves.
On October 7, IDF soldier Itai Sagi was
fighting with his elite Maglan unit near the
Gaza border when his unit came under
attack, with gunfire coming from every
direction and grenades exploding around
them. Six of his friends were critically
wounded almost immediately, and Itai
understood that he had to keep fighting, if
only to buy time for the others, until a
grenade exploded near him and suddenly he
was on the ground. He later described feeling
as though his soul had left his body and he
could see himself lying there, while for a few
moments he experienced a strange sense of
peace. Then he began seeing flashes of a
future he had not yet lived, the home he
hoped to build, his family, his niece’s face,
and a whole life that might never happen,
and something inside him began screaming
that he had to breathe and fight his way back.
His friends managed to pull him to safety, he
underwent lifesaving surgery, and he
survived, but survival changed him because
it wasn’t simply that he had escaped death.
He understood that he had been given more
life, and when you understand that your life
has been given back to you, the obvious
question becomes what you are going to do
with it. This may be the real question of
Sukkos.
The Torah calls the first day of Sukkos וםֹיּּבַּ
וןֹשׁאִרִָהָ,” the first day,” and perhaps after the
experience of Yom Kippur it really is the first
day, the first day of the rest of our lives.
for take ּ,וְלְַקְַח ּ ְֶּתם ָלֶָכֶם ,us tells Hashem
yourselves, take hold of this year, take hold
of the people you love, take hold of your
relationship with Hashem, and take hold of
the things you keep promising yourself you
will get to one day. There are phone calls we
need to make, relationships we need to
repair, learning we need to begin, changes in
our davening we have been postponing, and
people we love who need to hear what they
mean to us. We reflected on, and davened
about, these things for ten meaningful days,

and now we have been given life, and the
challenge is not simply to remain alive but to
truly live.
Then we go sit in a sukkah, a flimsy and
temporary structure with a roof that reminds
us how little in this world is actually
permanent. Our homes aren’t permanent, our
possessions aren’t permanent, our bodies
aren’t permanent and we aren’t permanent,
and right there, surrounded by fragility and
impermanence, the Torah tells us to be
happy. Perhaps it isn’t despite that fragility
that we are happy, but because recognizing
how fragile life is allows us to finally
appreciate how precious it is.
We sometimes think that being “inscribed
for life” means we successfully avoided
death, but perhaps it means much more than
that. We have been entrusted with life.
Hashem has handed us another year and
asked what we are going to do with it. There
are relationships to repair, apologies to offer,
grudges to release, Torah to learn, tefillos to
say with more focus, children and
grandchildren to enjoy, people who need our
help, dreams we keep postponing, and
ordinary moments we keep rushing through
while waiting for something more important
to happen. The truth is that these are the
important things, and this life, this day and
this breath are the gifts we so often fail to
notice.
The woman whose heart stopped knows that,
Itai knows that, and anyone who has stood at
the boundary between life and death knows
it in a way the rest of us can only imagine.
Sukkos challenges us not to wait until we
almost lose our lives to appreciate that we
have them. We pick up the lulav and wave it
with everything we have, not as a victory
flag announcing that we won, but as an
expression of overwhelming gratitude to the
One Who has given us our lives back. Thank
You for another heartbeat, another breath,
another Yom Tov, another year, another
opportunity to love the people around us,
another chance to become who we are
capable of becoming.