Sukkot & True Beauty

This is not your grandfather’s sukkah.

Like many things these days, even sukkahs have gone ultra-luxe.  Your sukkah can now be crafted from walls made entirely of boxwood.  You can suspend cage-bird lanterns or centerpieces to rival a wedding at the Plaza.  Florists have been working frantically this week to design and decorate clients’ sukkahs. 

One designer offered a sukkah package — in which he transforms eight-day huts into an ethereal garden, or a Persian castle, according to a client’s preference.  “I love taking a traditional sukkah and transitioning it into a piece of art that people walk into and say, ‘That’s incredible.’”

The cost of a custom-design sukkah ranges from $1,500-10,000. (Check out https://www.luxurysukkahs.com/ if you’re interested!)

I thought we had a fancy sukkah growing up because we put up a fake chandelier!

Sukkot and beauty go hand-in-hand.  The Talmud (Shabbat 133b) teaches:

דתניא זה אלי ואנוהו התנאה לפניו במצות עשה לפניו סוכה נאה ולולב נאה ושופר נאה ציצית נאה ספר תורה נאה

It was taught in a baraita: “This is my God and I will glorify Him…” The Sages interpreted anveihu homiletically as linguistically related to noi, beauty.  Accordingly, the verse teaches us: Beautify yourself before God in mitzvot.  It is proper to perform the mitzva as beautifully as possible.  Make a beautiful sukkah, a beautiful lulav, a beautiful shofar, beautiful tzitzit, and beautiful parchment for a Torah scroll…

Sukkot provides several opportunities to beautify our mitzvot – sukkah decorations and a beautiful etrog come immediately to mind.  Throughout the year, our performance of mitzvoth can be made more beautiful.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Is there a standard of beauty to which we can all subscribe?

One Erev Sukkot, Reb Aryeh Levin, known as the Tzaddik of Yerushalayim for his constant performance of acts of kindness, entered Rubenstein’s store in Meah Shearim, which sold sefarim, religious items, and etrogim.  He asked the owner for an etrog was and was given a box.  Reb Aryeh peeked inside for a second, closed it up, and went on his way.

A young boy who had watched this exchange ran after the rabbi.  When he reached the #11 bus stop, the boy asked Reb Aryeh why he hadn’t checked the etrog for a longer time like everyone else does, examining every inch and bump.

Reb Aryeh answered:

There are two mitzvot that require hiddur: etrog, which the Torah (Vayikra 23:40) calls a “pri eitz hadar – a fruit of a beautiful tree,” and the obligation to show respect to elders (Vayikra 19:32):  “v’hadarta pnei zakein – you shall show deference to the old.”  For these two mitzvot the Torah uses the word with the root “הדר - hadar.”  This teaches that one must beautify or go above and beyond in fulfilling both mitzvot.

I am now running to the nursing home to bring dentures for an old man whose teeth have completely deteriorated. He needs to eat dinner like a normal human being and if I don’t make it in time he will once again be forced to eat bread dipped in milk.  This is very important and this is also hiddur mitzvah!

Everyone is familiar with the hiddur mitzvah, of beautifying our Judaism.  We should try to focus just as much on the hiddur of respect for the elderly as well as to beautify all of our interpersonal interactions.

When it comes to enhancing our mitzvot, the most beautiful mitzvot are those that require us to give of ourselves for another.

Personally, I think the most beautiful etrog is one blemished from being passed around for others to use.

May we fulfill the mitzvah of a beautiful etrog as well as well as all mitzvot in the most beautiful way possible – and may our most beautiful actions be ones that lift up others.

Tefillin on Death Row, Second Chances, and Seizing the Moment

What kind of scene does this picture describe?

This is a picture of Rabbi Dovid Goldstein, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of West Houston, Texas, and Jedidiah Murphy, a death-row inmate in a West Livingston, Texas prison.  (Guess which one is which. J) 

The story was covered in the Jewish press, and there is longer story about this subject on Chabad's website.  Rabbi Goldstein enabled Murphy, convicted for killing a 79-year-old woman, to lay tefillin for the first time.  It was not easy to arrange as state law prevents death row inmates from having direct contact with their visitors.  Goldstein provided the tefillin and a kippah for Murphy and instructed him through the glass.  Rabbi and prisoner celebrated the “Bar Mitzvah” with chips and soft drinks from the nearby vending machine.

(This was not Goldstein’s first time putting tefillin on a death-row inmate.  In 2013, he helped Douglas Feldman put on tefillin one week before being executed by lethal injection.  That time, he was allowed direct contact with the prisoner since the tefillin were considered part of his last rites.)

What can we take away from a story like this?

There are Jewish criminals…Chabad is dedicated to every single Jew…It’s never too late to perform a mitzvah…

I find myself thinking about how we approach second chances.  Murphy never had a Bar Mitzvah or a chance to act in a Jewish way.  It took a death-row encounter with a truly dedicated rabbi to create this mitzvah moment.  Often, we seek out second chances in moments of extremis.  We repent in time for Yom Kippur or we try to spend more time with someone after not spending time with them earlier.  As the saying goes, “Better late than never…”

Why can’t there be more opportunities to seize the moment?  How about more positively-induced second chances?  We could each benefit from proactively wanting to do all these good things because they are too good to miss out on, and we want to experience them again.

Do you remember the Life Saver commercial in which a father and his daughter are sitting watching a beautiful sunset.  As the last of the light disappears beneath the horizon, the dad says, “Going...going...going...gone!”  And then the girl says, “Do it again, Daddy!” 

There are so many things we should try to experience again because they are just so special and awesome that, heck, why not?  We don’t need to wait until the last minute – or when it is too late – to try and spend more time with our family or enjoy the beautiful weather or read that book or try that new experience.

We may not be able to make the sun set again, and we, most certainly, don’t want to need to be in an extreme situation to push us to perform a mitzvah.  For now, as we start a New Year, let’s think about all the positive experiences - for religious and personal growth or spending time with family or just doing wonderful things – we can grab.