All our work is internal. How can we manifest it? Only outwardly. Naturally, organizing our inner work requires certain external actions. After all, gathering a large group demands effort in this world.

We deliberately seek opportunities to spend more time together, unite further, to discover shared activities, and express what each of us has inside outwardly. We need some form, some foundation, some material for communication with one another.

That is why we need this tent (the Sukkah) with all its symbolic features: a roof symbolizing the screen (Masach), above which is the upper light entering through the gaps. All this symbolism corresponds to the upper world. But in principle, the same thing would exist without a Sukkah.

We use various external attributes in order to connect with one another. Since we do this together, investing joint efforts, we thereby create the foundation upon which we build the common Kli. We do this solely to create unity, adhesion, and connection among us, beginning at the lowest, animal level, and continuing upward.

If there is anything holy or sublime here, anything directed toward the Creator, it is because we have invested our desires in it. We do this not in order to build a beautiful Sukkah, but in order to generate the necessary collective effort and infuse it with our own desires and aspirations.

We want our aspiration toward the upper one to become revealed ultimately and to evoke a powerful surrounding light. Otherwise, there is no holiness in it.

Even the Temple in Jerusalem was immediately destroyed as soon as the disciples of Rabbi Akiva began to hate one another. Rabbi Akiva said, “Love your neighbor as yourself”; this is a fundamental law. But suddenly, egoism flared up within them.

The fact is that they had reached a specific historical stage where egoism was supposed to rise. It rose so sharply in all twenty-four thousand of Rabbi Akiva’s disciples that, instead of love, they immediately began relating to one another egoistically, which meant that they came to hate each other.

And the Temple was immediately destroyed. Otherwise, what would have remained of those bricks? Some kind of palace? Would people have taken paid tours there? What else would there have been? Nothing.

In other words, without an inner attitude, all this externality has no meaning. Therefore, it disappears from our world, is destroyed, and vanishes, because its spiritual root disappears. For this reason, there is nothing holy in this little hut (Sukkah) if your thoughts are not directed toward the spiritual.

The law is the law. No one asks about your intentions. A person may say, “I would like to; I would desire to; I have such intentions.” The world is judged not by our intentions, but by the degree of our inner correction.
[361986]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson on 9/24/26, Sitrin Convention, Sukkot 2003

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