לקוטי שחות חלק ט - עשרים באב ב

My revered father explained that the sukkah itself creates the eruv. The encompassing holiness of the sukkah affects even physical food, because the purpose of the sukkah is to draw transcendent holiness into physical matters.

When my revered father received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, a question was brought before them. The residents had forgotten to make an eruv chatzeiros on the day before Sukkos.

My revered father responded that the sukkah itself creates the eruv and unites the residents.

The Inner Explanation

The divisions among the Jewish people result from their physical bodies and from the levels of nefesh, ruach, and neshamah, which are the dimensions of the soul vested within the body.

From the perspective of the encompassing levels of chayah and yechidah, however—the spiritual level represented by the sukkah—all Jews are united and intermingled as one.

This, however, raises a question.

The encompassing powers of the soul transcend its revealed faculties. How, then, can they affect the physical act of eating?

This can be understood by first considering that the sukkah contains two seemingly opposite qualities.

On the one hand, a sukkah must be a temporary dwelling. On the other hand, the Torah requires:

“You shall dwell in it as you dwell in your permanent home.”

The inner meaning is that the lesson of the sukkah is that all physical matters should be regarded as temporary and secondary, rather than as the essential purpose of life.

Nevertheless, when a person draws holiness into physical matters, those very matters become a permanent dwelling—a dwelling place for Hashem.

This explains why the encompassing holiness of the sukkah affects even physical food. The entire purpose of the sukkah is to draw the transcendent, encompassing level of holiness into the physical realities of life.