Why does the order of the ushpizin include precisely Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David, and what does this order say about a person's spiritual journey?
The most surprising thing about this order is that it is not a chronological order at all.
Joseph lived before Moses and Aaron. And yet in the kabbalistic order he appears after them:
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, David.
Why?
Because according to the order associated with the Arizal, the ushpizin are not arranged by the question “who lived first”, but by the seven lower attributes:
Chesed (kindness), Gevurah (restraint), Tiferet (harmony), Netzach (endurance), Hod (acknowledgment), Yesod (foundation), Malchut (kingship).
And correspondingly:
Abraham - Chesed
Isaac - Gevurah
Jacob - Tiferet
Moses - Netzach
Aaron - Hod
Joseph - Yesod
David - Malchut.
And this completely changes the meaning of the ushpizin.
This is not a guest list. It is a map for building a person.
First of all - where did the idea come from that the righteous “come” to the sukkah?
In the Zohar, in the portion of Emor, the sukkah is described as a place where the Divine Presence dwells with a person, and Abraham, five other righteous ones and King David are mentioned as those who make their dwelling with him. Source: Zohar, part 3, Emor, 103b.
Elsewhere in the Zohar (addenda to part 3) seven righteous ones appear corresponding to seven supernal aspects: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David.
It is important to be precise: there are two accepted orders. In a common Ashkenazi order Joseph comes before Moses and Aaron, following the order of the generations. The order in the question - Moses, Aaron, Joseph - is the kabbalistic order that parallels the attributes.
And now comes the truly beautiful part.
Day one - Abraham: before anything else, you have to open the heart
Abraham is identified with Chesed.
In a spiritual reading, a person cannot begin their journey while closed up inside themselves.
The first stage is to go outward.
To give.
To love.
To host.
To believe that there is someone in the world besides me.
In other words, the first step in building a great person is not knowledge and not power.
It is an open heart.
But here a danger immediately arises.
If all of life is only kindness - without boundaries, without restraint, without the ability to say no - even a good thing can fall apart.
And so Isaac comes.
Day two - Isaac: a person must also know how to stop
Isaac is identified with Gevurah.
Gevurah in this reading is not only being stronger than others.
Sometimes the greatest strength is precisely the ability to limit yourself.
Not everything I want - I do.
Not everything I can - I take.
Not every urge - I obey.
Abraham says:
Open up.
Isaac says:
Set a limit.
And it is impossible to live with only one of them.
Too much kindness without restraint can turn into flooding.
Too much restraint without kindness can turn into harshness.
And then Jacob comes.
Day three - Jacob: not choosing a side, but creating a whole person
Jacob is identified with Tiferet, the attribute that in the kabbalistic structure stands between Chesed and Gevurah.
And here something delicate happens.
Maturity is not saying:
I am a person of kindness.
Or:
I am a person of restraint.
Maturity is knowing:
When to give and when to stop.
When to embrace and when to set a boundary.
When to yield and when to stand your ground.
This is not a fifty-fifty compromise.
It is the ability to join forces that seem contradictory into one personality.
Up to here the person has been built from within.
But now a new question arrives:
What do you do with everything you have built?
And so Moses comes.
Day four - Moses: you received truth - now carry it through the wilderness
Moses is identified with Netzach.
Here the movement begins.
One can be a person full of kindness, discipline and balance - and in practice change nothing in the world.
Netzach is the ability to keep going.
To lead.
Not to break when the road is longer than you thought.
And this fits very well, as an interpretation, with the figure of Moses:
The Exodus from Egypt is not a moment.
The wilderness is not a day.
Leading a stiff-necked people is not a short project.
The spiritual journey reaches, at a certain point, a very simple test:
Are you able to keep going even after the initial enthusiasm has disappeared?
But here too there is a danger.
A person who is all “Netzach”, victory, achievement and forward motion - may trample people along the way.
And so after Moses comes precisely Aaron.
Day five - Aaron: after you have learned to win, learn to bow
Aaron is identified with Hod.
And here there is a beautiful pair:
Netzach and Hod.
In a spiritual reading one can describe them as two complementary forces.
Netzach says:
I am moving forward.
Hod says:
I also know how to make room.
Netzach pushes.
Hod receives.
Netzach wants to achieve.
Hod knows how to recognize, to give thanks and to be part of something greater than me.
A great person is not only someone who knows how to lead.
They are also someone who knows that not everything depends on them.
And then Joseph comes.
And here the order of the ushpizin becomes truly fascinating.
Day six - Joseph: everything you have built must now pass into life itself
Joseph is identified with Yesod.
In kabbalistic literature Yesod is a force of connection and transmission to Malchut.
And this fits Joseph in an almost wondrous way.
He dreams dreams - but he also runs the economy of Egypt.
He lives in a spiritual world - but knows how to deal with money, food, government, temptation and crisis.
He does not remain only with ideas.
He brings them down into reality.
And here one can formulate the challenge of the sixth day like this:
Abraham gave you a heart.
Isaac gave you boundaries.
Jacob taught you to balance.
Moses taught you to move forward.
Aaron taught you to set yourself aside and to acknowledge.
And now Joseph asks:
Does all of this work when you leave the house of study and meet money, power, sexuality, work and real people?
Because a spirituality that works only in a sterile place - is not yet complete.
And then the seventh day arrives.
David - Malchut: now everything you have learned must become life
David is identified with Malchut.
And this is perhaps the most surprising ending.
The journey does not end with Moses.
Not with prophecy.
Not with Mount Sinai.
Not even with Joseph the righteous.
It ends with kingship.
With public life.
With reality.
With a world in which one must lead human beings, make decisions, deal with failures, get up, pray and keep going.
And here I move explicitly to interpretation and homily:
Perhaps the order of the ushpizin says that the goal of serving God is not to flee the world and remain on some spiritual peak.
The goal is to take everything you have received - and bring it into life.
And this creates an amazing journey of seven days:
Abraham - open the heart.
Isaac - learn to master yourself.
Jacob - join the forces within you.
Moses - go out on your mission and do not break along the way.
Aaron - remember that not everything is you.
Joseph - join heaven and earth within life itself.
David - turn it all into reality.
And here one can understand why David is at the end.
Not because he is necessarily “greater” than everyone who came before him.
But because in the kabbalistic map, Malchut is the place into which all the previous forces flow in order to appear in the world.
And then there is one especially beautiful detail here:
A person sits in the sukkah for seven days - in a temporary dwelling.
But within this temporary dwelling they undergo, as it were, a process of building an inner structure.
On the first day you begin with Chesed.
And on the seventh day you arrive at Malchut.
In other words:
You left the physical house for seven days - in order to build the person who will live in it when you return.
And this is of course a homily, not a quotation from a source.
But perhaps this is the beautiful secret of the ushpizin:
They are not only seven righteous people we invite into the sukkah. They are seven questions we invite into ourselves.
Do I know how to give?
Do I know how to stop?
Do I know how to balance?
Do I know how to persevere?
Do I know how to make room?
Do I know how to join holiness to life?
And in the end, am I able to turn all of this into the person I truly am?
On leaving the house for the sukkah and returning to it, see also: Is the sukkah really a psychological test?