Succos Hisorirus: Find Your Schach

Rabbi Silber traces the halacha that a succah taller than twenty amos is invalid, because at that height a person sits in the shade of the walls rather than the shade of the schach, into a lesson about identity. He teaches that the walls of the succah represent the material, definable parts of us, our job, our home, our possessions, while the schach represents the undefined, spiritual part of who we are that resists easy definition. Rabbi Silber calls on listeners to stop letting the walls, the external trappings of life, be the whole story of who they are, and instead to spend Succos discovering the ambiguous, holy spark within that has not yet been fully uncovered.

• We often define ourselves entirely by what can be measured: our job, our home, our possessions.
• There is a part of every person that resists easy definition, an inner holiness still waiting to be discovered.
• Living under the schach instead of the shade of the walls is a reminder not to let material things be the whole of your identity.
• Real growth means being willing to explore the undefined, ambiguous parts of yourself, even without full clarity.