After the arduous year of working the fields, the festival of Sukkot arrives. With it comes the joy of accomplishment and national celebration. We are then commanded to rejoice before Hashem with samples of the land’s produce, and to leave our permanent homes in order to dwell in huts (sukkot). In this way we joyfully demonstrate our utter dependence upon Hashem:
However, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you gather the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the festival of Hashem for seven days. On the first day is a day of rest and on the eighth day is a day of rest. And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of the beautiful tree (citron), palm fronds, and the branch of the thick (plaited, myrtle) tree, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before Hashem, your G-d, for seven days. And you shall celebrate it as a festival to Hashem, for seven days during the year; it is an eternal statute throughout your generations; in the seventh month shall you celebrate it. In huts shall you dwell for seven days; every citizen in Israel shall dwell in huts. In order that your generations shall know that in huts did I house the Children of Israel when I brought them out of the land of Egypt; I am Hashem, your G-d (Vayikra 23:39-43).

The rejoicing embraces every segment of our society:
And you shall rejoice on your festival, you, and your son, and your daughter, and your slave, and your maid-servant, and the Levi, and the proselyte, and the orphan, and the widow who are within your gates. … and you shall be only joyful (Devarim 16:14-15).
It is for this reason that Sukkot is zman simchatenu, the season of our joy.

During the Babylonian exile, most of the Jewish people lost touch with Torah laws, even, it seems, the festival of Sukkot. Thus, when a minority of the exiles returns, and Ezra the Scribe reads the Torah publicly, they are surprised to learn about it:
And they found it written in the Torah that Hashem had commanded through the hand of Moshe that the Children of Israel should dwell in huts during the festival in the seventh month. And that they should proclaim and spread the word in all their cities and in Jerusalem, saying, “Go out to the mountain and bring olive branches and oil-tree branches and willow branches and date-palm branches and thick tree branches, to make huts, as is written.” And the people went out and they brought [these items], and they made huts for themselves, each one on his roof, and in their courtyards, and in the courtyards of the house of G-d, and in the plaza of the Water Gate and in the plaza of the Gate of Efrayim. And all the congregation, those who returned from the captivity, made huts, and they dwelled in huts, because the Children of Israel had not done so from the days of Yeshua bin-Nun until that day. And there was very great rejoicing (Nechemiah 8:14-17).

The Talmud (Arachin 32b) expresses no small degree of amazement that Sukkot was forgotten not only during the years of exile, but long before:
“Is it possible that when David came they did not make sukkot, and when Shlomo came they did not make sukkot, until Ezra came?”
Here is the Talmud’s answer:
“Rather, the text means to draw an analogy between their entry in the days of Ezra and their entry in the days of Yehoshua: Just as upon their entry in the days of Yehoshua they began to count Shemittah years and Jubilee years and sanctified walled cities, so upon their entry in the days of Ezra did they begin to count Shemittah years and Jubilee years and sanctify walled cities.”
In other words, the passage in Nechemiah discusses two separate matters: 1) The celebration of Sukkot, which had been largely neglected during the exile, and 2) The re-sanctification of Eretz Yisrael, with the resultant observance of all the commandments incumbent on the land (i.e Shemittah and Yovel).

But, what do these two subjects have to do with each other? As Malbim (R. Meir Leib ben Yechiel Michael, 1809-1877), in his commentary to Nechemiah, asks pointedly: “How can we extract [the Talmud’s answer] from the expression “because [the Children of Israel] had not done so from the days of Yeshua bin-Nun?”

Malbim bases his answer on Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 637:3. There, Rema rules that although it is impossible to “steal” property (with the result that if one dwelled in a stolen sukkah the dwelling would be valid after the fact), nevertheless one must not, ab initio, use a stolen sukkah. Similarly, one should not build his sukkah on publicly-owned land. (In fact, Magen Avraham [R. Avraham Abele ben Chayim HaLevi Gombiner, c. 1637-1683] says that the beracha for such a sukkah would be in vain! Most other authorities, however, do not go as far as this.)

For many generations, says Malbim, it was not possible to build a sukkah in Jerusalem, because “Jerusalem was not divided among the tribes” (Bava Kama 82b), meaning that there was no private ownership anywhere in Jerusalem. This situation continued even in the days of David and Shlomo. When, however, the land was re-acquired and re-sanctified in the time of Ezra, his court decreed that sukkot could be built in Jerusalem and on other public property in Eretz Yisrael, by making the site of the sukkah a private domain — this innovation of Ezra is evident from the Tosefta (Bava Kama 6:13).

Consequently, the two subjects that the Talmud says are implicit in Nechemiah are connected: Ezra’s sanctification has a direct impact on the returning exiles’ ability to build sukkot everywhere, even
in the courtyard of the house of G-d, and in the plaza of the Water Gate and in the plaza of the Gate of Efrayim.

The joy of each family’s sukkah radiates outward, encompassing the entire Jewish people.