To Be Only Happy

You shall celebrate the festival of Sukkot for seven days, when you bring in the products of your threshing floor and wine vat. You shall rejoice on your festival along with your son and daughter, your male and female slave, and the Levite, proselyte, orphan and widow that are within your gates. Seven days shall you celebrate to the Lord your God in the place that God will choose since God will then bless you in all your agricultural and other endeavors, and you will be only (ach) happy.                           Deuteronomy 16:13-15

           My saintly teacher, Rabbi Mordechai Rogov, noted that Sukkot involves three mitzvot: sitting in a Sukka, taking the four species and rejoicing, with the latter being the most difficult. Indeed, the Gaon of Vilna is quoted as saying that the mitzva of being “only happy” during the entire seven days of Sukkot is the most difficult mitzva to fulfill.

           Rabbi Rogov notes that the word generally our Sages understand the word “ach” to be limiting, and questions what our verse intends to limit.

           Within the agricultural cycle of the Land of Israel, Sukkot is the harvest festival, so that in addition to the religious celebration of the holiday, the farmer in Israel celebrates the joy of his tangible accomplishment with the harvest.

           Rabbi Rogov applies the comment of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, that since eating involves an obvious physical benefit, the mitzva of eating on the ninth of Tishrei (the day before Yom Kippur) is more difficult than the mitzva of fasting on Yom Kippur, since fasting can more easily be done “for the sake of heaven.”

           Thus, Rabbi Rogov suggests, “ach” is intended to focus the Israelites’ rejoicing on the spiritual aspect of Sukkot, to the exclusion of the joy of the harvest.