Siman - Succah Daf 53
- A person’s feet are his guarantors
Rebbe Yochanan said: רגלוהי דבר איניש אינון ערבין ביה – A person’s feet are his guarantors; לאתר דמיתבעי תמן מובילין יתיה – to where he is summoned, there they lead him. Rashi explains that when one's time comes, they bring him to the place where he is meant to die. The Gemara brings an incident that illustrates this principle. One day Shlomo Hamelech saw that the Malach Hamaves was sad and asked him why. The Malach Hamaves answered that he is being demanded of to take two of Shlomo Hamelech’s scribes, who sit there in the court, and he has been unable to. When Shlomo Hamelech heard this, he tried to help his scribes escape by handing them over to demons, and he sent them to the town of Luz, a city where the Malach Hamaves has no rule. But when they reached the gates of the town, the Malach Hamaves was waiting for them, and they died before entering the city. The next day Shlomo Hamelech saw that the Malach Hamaves was happy and asked him why. He answered that Shlomo Hamelech sent them to the very place that they were demanded of him to take away their lives. Immediately Shlomo Hamelech said: "A person’s feet are his guarantors; to where he is summoned, they lead him".
- Not sleeping due to the simchah of the שמחת בית השואבה
It was taught in a Baraisa: Rebbe Yehoshua ben Chananya said: כשהיינו שמחים שמחת בית השואבה לא ראינו שינה בעינינו – When we would rejoice at the שמחת בית השאובה, our eyes would see no sleep for all of Succos. How so? The first hour of the day was the tamid shel shachar. From there we proceeded to tefillah, then to the mussaf, then to the tefillah for mussaf, then to the Beis Hamidrash to learn. From there we went to a seudah, and then to Minchah, and then to the tamid shel bein ha’arbaim, מכאן ואילך לשמחת בית השואבה – and from then on, the rest of the night, we devoted ourselves the שמחת בית השואבה, until the next morning when the cycle would begin again. When the Gemara brings a proof that people cannot stay awake for even three days, the Gemara answers that Rebbe Yehoshua meant לא טעמנו טעם שינה – We did not enjoy a proper sleep, for they would only doze on each other’s shoulders.
- The source for the fifteen Shir Hama’alos
The Mishnah on Daf 51b stated that during the Simchas Beis Hasho’eva, the Leviim with their countless number of instruments, stood on the fifteen steps that led down from the Ezras Yisroel to the Ezras Nashim כנגד חמש עשרה שיר המעלות שבתהילים – which correspond to fifteen Songs of Ascent found in Tehillim. On our Daf, Rav Chisda asked a Rabbi who would explain Aggadata to him, for the source of these fifteen Shir Hama’alos, and the Rabbi related that when Dovid excavated the pits beneath the mizbayach, the waters of the deep came up and threatened to flood the world. Dovid asked if anyone knew if it was permitted to write the Divine Name on a shard and cast into the deep so that the waters will calm down. Eventually, Achitophel, Dovid’s mentor, made a kal v’chomer and reasoned that if the Divine Name is permitted to be erased to bring shalom between a man and his wife in the case of a sotah, all the more so it would be permitted to do so to bring peace for the whole world. He permitted Dovid to do so and the deep subsided sixteen thousand amos. When Dovid saw that the water had subsided to such a great extent, he said that the higher the water, the moister and more fertile the earth will be. He recited the fifteen Shir Hama’alos and brought the water back up fifteen thousand amos, until they were only one thousand amos below the earth’s surface.
