Why Succot shouldn’t leave you out of pocket

While we’re encouraged to spend on festival celebrations, the rabbis recognised that there are those who struggle to afford it

HIDDUR IS the concept of making Jewish observance glorious or beautiful. The aim of living an observant Jewish life isn’t taking every short-cut and looking to get away with every least-demanding option. We are called on to delight in living a Jewish life and while hiddur is considered a value year-round, it becomes a particular focus over Succot. We are encouraged to beautify the succah, decorating it beautifully and, in the language of the Talmud, taking “our fine vessels and fine bedding” into our temporary booths. The other characteristic observance of Succot — the four species — is also the subject of much rabbinic discussion aimed at beautification. At stands and stores along Golders Green Road the options are arrayed before us. There are basic sets, kosher but lacking in glory, and then there are the mehudar sets.

The discriminating can select a mehudar palm branch, mehudar myrtles and mehudar willow, but the greatest focus is the etrog; after all, the biblical reference to the etrog is to the “fruit of the hadar [beautiful] tree”. A mehudar etrog is of a good size, vibrant in its yellow colouration, evenly shaped and free from any marks or discolouration. Of course, a mehudar etrog is more expensive than its plainer cousin, sometimes a lot more expensive. A stunning mehudar etrog plays a vital role in Gidi Dar’s wonderful film Ushpizin, where the lead character celebrates coming into some unexpected funds by splashing out on the most beautiful etrog he can find.

A focus on beautification makes sense, in fact it’s largely lovely. It lifts the celebration of Succot from something basic, begrudging even, and into

A SIMPLE survey will suffice to show that most Jews outside Israel do not sleep in the succah during Succot, even if they have one. (In Israel many people do.)

This has been a puzzle for the (halachic decision-makers) for centuries. something clearly cherished. But too much attention on beautification comes at a cost, literally. It can sometimes feel that Jewish observance is in danger of becoming a financial competition “to keep up with the Levys”, and that’s dangerous. Jewish observance mustn’t risk embarrassing those who can’t — or shouldn’t — afford to spend extra sums on extra observance. There is an intriguing clue to an ancient version of this tension in the talmudic treatment of Succot. The Mishnah states that the collection of lulav, myrtle and willow should be bound together only using willow, but Rabbi Meir notes “the inhabitants of Jerusalem” would bind up their four species with gold, a seeming act of hiddur. His observation is explained away, but not, to my eyes, entirely satisfactorily. There remains a tension between the simple binding of willow and the fancy gold version.

I’m reminded of a similar talmudic discussion about a very different issue. “It used to be that food would be brought to rich mourners in baskets of gold, and to poor mourners in baskets of willow, and they would carry a rich person’s corpse on a fancy bier and a poor person’s corpse on a simple bier. But the sages ruled [from the Hebrew root tikkun] that food would be only broughttoallinbasketsof willowandeveryoneshould be carried to burial on a simple bier out of respect for the poor,” (Moed Katan 27 a-b, slightly reworded).

I wonder whether the discussions around the gold lace used (presumably only by the rich) on Succot might be linked to the remarkable defence of the poor recorded in the discussions around burial practice. It’s not hard to imagine the scene; the rich burghers of Jerusalem, already resplendent in their finer clothes, with their finer lulavim all bound up in gold, and the poor, already stretched by the financial demands of the season, simply unable to afford a fancy gold binding, feeling embarrassed to be seen.

In the discussion around burial practice the rabbis note that the pressure to spend more was “harder for the family than the death itself”, and that some families felt forced to “abandon their dead and flee”, rather than face the impossible demands of the hiddur version of burial customs. The Talmud relates that Rabban Gamliel took matters into his own hands, decreeing he is to be buried only in the simplest of shrouds, and his act of leadership brings the rest of the nation into line.

This tension, between hiddur and not allowing Judaism to become a materialist “arms race”, is one I recognise. There are so many opportunities to spend more and more money on extra observance. And money, for the vast majority, is tight. Perhaps, as rabbis and as a community, we need to spend more time stressing the value of an egalitarian, simple performance of acts of Jewish engagement, rather than fawning over the hiddur and the costly. Personally I’m planning a very cheap — though still beautiful — approach to the decoration of my own succah. My kids are at work on this year’s decorations as I type; I just hope they don’t think to charge. Jeremy Gordon is the rabbi of New London Synagogue and the author of a newly published collection of articles and sermons, ‘Spiritual Vagabondry and the Making of a Rabbi’ (Masorti Judaism, £6.99). You can read an extract at www.thejc.com/judaism