Living in Beauty

Chol HaMoed Sukkot 5777 / 22 October 2016

I would wager that it’s impossible to spend more than 20 minutes in this building without passing through the gift shop at least once — and yet how often do we stop to notice it? On our way to and from other parts of the building, we probably don’t see that it is among one of the most important rooms in our synagogue. A few months ago, as I prepared to head home after Kabbalat Shabbat, a couple came in the door. After introducing myself, they shared that they were on vacation from Florida, noticed BZBI as they passed on the street, and wanted to take a quick look around. During our very abbreviated tour, the wife stopped in the gift shop. “I used to run my synagogue’s gift shop,” she told me. “You should tell whoever buys for your shop that they have excellent taste.”

(Yes, I did relay the message to Bev at kiddush the next morning.)

I remembered that story this Sukkot when I started to wonder if there might be a deeper meaning in the gift shop. The synagogue where I grew up, Ahavath Achim in Atlanta, Georgia, had a gift shop with floor-to-ceiling windows displaying a varied assortment of items. Among my earliest memories of shul-going, I loved to look at the glittering kiddush cups and havdallah sets, magen david jewelry, ironic aprons and sports-themed kippot sitting in the windows. It seemed like almost every week something small would be different — a new piece added, something familiar no longer in the window because it now sat on someone’s shelf at home or wrapped up in anticipation of a bar mitzvah or wedding.

I suspect for most of us, the gift shop feels as integral to a synagogue as the ark or the ner tamid, so I did a little research into its history. It turns out, not surprisingly, that gift shops as we presently know them emerged during the post-World War II boom of middle-class American Judaism.^[1] At the same time, ornate ritual objects are hardly a new phenomenon. Anyone who has visited a Jewish museum knows that for centuries, perhaps even back to the time of the Temple, Jewish ritual objects have emphasized form as well as function. Intricate engravings on kiddush cups and Torah crowns, richly colored illuminations on haggadah manuscripts, and delicately woven sukkot tapestries all reinforce what the late Rabbi Milton Steinberg called a “fundamental Jewish attitude:” the concept of הידור מצוה, “beautifying the mitzvah.”^[2] 

From the very beginning, our Rabbis applied הידור מצוה as broadly as possible: for every mitzvah, we should seek the most beautiful, dignified, honorable form. Moreover, and I suspect counterintuitive for us, Jewish tradition understood הידור מצוה as an essential part of the mitzvah itself: given the choice between two tallitot, for example, the Talmud actually requires us to purchase the more beautiful of the two, at a premium of up to one-third the value of the less-attractive item.^[5] In one extreme case, we are told, Rabban Gamliel paid a thousand zuz for an etrog — the equivalent of eight months’ wages for an average worker.^[6]

We’re not expected to take things as far as Rabban Gamliel — the Talmud itself evinces some discomfort with the extravagance of his purchase — but Sukkot does bring out the clearest examples of הידור מצוה. In addition to our quest for the best lulav and etrog, our Sages (who, it must be admitted, lived in a milder climate) instruct us to furnish our sukkot with our nicest couches, linens, and dishes.^[7] One of the favorite games I remember from Rebecca’s parents’ sukkah is the nightly “silver count,” to make sure none of their best dessert forks ended up in the trash by accident.

Even if you leave the sofa in the house — often a prudent move — anyone with room to build a sukkah knows that we inevitably end up with an ever-growing collection of bins filled with decorations. I have a passionate love for decorating a sukkah, sometimes to Rebecca’s dismay; but even I was surprised to learn just how important the gourds, paper chains, and colored lights really are.

There is nothing intrinsically special about the structure of the sukkah itself. This week I have been in sukkot made of metal, wood, and plastic, pre-fabricated kits and hardcore DIY projects; Kristina, in the lumber department at the Lowe’s on 50th street, is pretty much an expert on sukkah construction. We build sukkot out of perfectly ordinary stuff, and yet the first time we recite the blessing לישב בסוכה, “to dwell in the sukkah,” the structure of the sukkah becomes holy. For the rest of the week, we may not use its materials for any other purpose — even if, God forbid, the sukkah collapses and can no longer be used for its original purpose.^[8] Even after the holiday, any materials we don’t keep for next year may not be unceremoniously dumped; we must find ways to reuse or dispose of them with dignity.^[9]

All of this makes sense: our using the sukkah to fulfill a mitzvah transforms otherwise ordinary materials into holy objects. What I didn’t expect was that the Talmud would treat the decorations in the exact same way:

The point here is subtle but crucial: sukkah decorations, which we see have been commonplace at least as far back as the third century, take on sanctity in the same way that the sukkah itself becomes holy for the week.^[12] In other words, decorating the sukkah is not just a nice thing to do, or a way to involve children in the holiday; our adorning the sukkah plays an integral role in the mitzvah itself.

Now we can truly understand what Steinberg saw as so quintessentially Jewish about הידור מצוה: the fundamental assumption, in every mitzvah, that it’s not enough to do the technical minimum when we have the ability to do something beautiful. Look around the room and take in the different tallitot and kippot people wear. Think back to when we opened the ark, and the sifrei Torah stood there with gleaming crowns and embroidered jackets. On the way to kiddush, stroll through the gift shop. Examples of הידור מצוה surround us.

The sukkah provides us with a blueprint for a meaningful life. On Sukkot we actually inhabit a space filled with הידור מצוה. Pay attention when we go outside to the sukkah, and notice how beautifully our students decorated this year. The beauty surrounding us emphasizes our need to put some beauty, some dignity, into everything we do.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of talking through some of these ideas with our own Phyllis Kramer. As I imagine most of you have experienced first-hand, Phyllis has a gift for making every phone call and office visit a pleasure — from the uplifting sound of her calling out “Good morning!” to her quiet determination to go the extra mile for our community, Phyllis’ work in our Temple office embodies the spirit of הידור מצוה. As she told me, “Work is a blessing; everyone has some job to do, and the most important question is: how can I make my job more special?”

“Few people attain great lives,” Jim Collins observes, “In large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”^[13] At its broadest and most ambitious, הידור מצוה calls each of us to a life of greatness. Will we stop at sufficient performance of mitzvot, or can we find a way to add beauty as well? When we consider our relationships, do we assess how much is “enough,” or will we go above and beyond in service of others? Our tradition challenges us — in all areas of life — to claim our work: to stand up and declare, “I did this.” As Phyllis said, each of us has a job to do in life; הידור מצוה asks us to go beyond “good enough” and live a life in which we can truly take pride.

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Tags: Beauty, Life, Mitzvot, Sukkot, Work