Maybe it was sukkah envy. Growing up, when Sukkot came around and school returned during the intermediate days of the holiday, our teacher would lead us out of the classroom, off school grounds, and out into the neighborhood, to visit the homes of classmates who lived nearby. Or, more precisely, to visit their sukkahs—the makeshift huts and humpies that Jews set up on balconies and verandas, in front yards or out back, for the eight days of the Festival of Booths. We would pop into one sukkah, stay and nosh for a while, and then it was on to the next. They call it sukkah hopping.
In the Northern Hemisphere, Sukkot comes at a slightly ambiguous time of the year; at the wrong end of autumn, the skies have already turned gray, and the air chilled. Like the Yiddish holiday lyric: A vint, a kaltn / blozt durch di shpaltn. A wind, so cold / blows through the walls. But in those antipodean springtime Septembers, filtered through the tint of childhood memory, Sukkot always seemed to come at the perfect time of the year. And, after the high-strung sobriety of the High Holidays, the sudden infusion of greenery into black and white, the move from the staid confines of the synagogue to the boundless outdoors, always comes as a joyful release. In other words, there was little our teachers could have done to keep us in our seats anyway.
It was on sukkah-hopping outings like these that I began picking up on some of the finer points of interior hut design. To cut to the chase, there is an old and widespread Jewish custom to decorate the Sukkah, and another Jewish “custom” to go a little overboard. And so, in the sukkahs of classmates and family friends, I would find posters and paper lanterns and disco balls and dangling bunches of plastic grapes (among other representatives of Israel’s Seven Species) and so many more shining, shimmering things.
All of this was new to me, because our sukkah at home never had any of those decorations. It was just four walls and some foliage. In Australia, that meant faded green palm fronds for a roof and—the one interesting thing about our sukkah—some camel-colored canvas walls, which the breeze would blow inward and then suck out again, like sails on a ship, giving our festive meals a vaguely nautical air. In fact, the same (minimalist, not maritime) aesthetic generally held true in the homes of all of my Chabad friends and teachers. And that is because, in the Chabad Chasidic tradition, there is a longstanding resistance to ornament. The mitzvah of the sukkah, I was told, is beautiful all on its own.
For a while this explanation irked me. For one, jazzing up a sukkah seemed fun. Designing, crafting, and hanging up all those decorations is a great way to inject a little creativity and self-expression into an ancient biblical commandment. Moreover, the idea of beautifying the mitzvahs we perform, also known as hiddur mitzvah, is a well-established ideal in Jewish law and practice, as taught in Tractate Shabbat of the Talmud (132b):
This is my G-d, and I will adorn him.” [From this verse we learn that you should] adorn yourself before Him with the mitzvot: Make a beautiful sukkah in His honor, a beautiful lulav, a beautiful shofar, beautiful fringes, and a beautiful Scroll of the Law, and write it with fine ink, a fine reed[-pen], and a skilled penman, and wrap it about with beautiful silks.
If you’re supposed to have a “a beautiful sukkah,” doesn’t adding decorations make it more beautiful? At the very least, it couldn’t hurt!
With time, I think I came to understand the reason for our opposition to decorating the sukkah. No, it wasn’t about any uncomfortable parallels with a certain non-Jewish holiday in which decorative tinsel is paired with, to put it delicately, a very different kind of festive shrubbery.
It wasn’t even something about the sukkah per se, although I do think there is something in the objection to sukkah decorations that resonates with some of the themes of the holiday. We leave the solid security of our houses each year and move into temporary huts to remind us of the precariousness of our national existence, the transience of all worldly things, and ultimately our dependence on divine protection. Building a simple, understated, slightly flimsy structure is sort of the point of the whole exercise.
To quote the opening bars of that same holiday ditty: A sukkah’leh, so little / made of boards, so simple.
But I think there is something else at play here, an idea that prompts us to reflect on the way that minimalism has its own kind of beauty, and on the risks of turning religion into an aesthetic experience.
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Despite the deep roots of sukkah decorations, alongside so many other rich and authentic religious artistic traditions, from wood-carved Torah arks to illuminated manuscripts to filigreed silver Kiddush cups, Judaism also evinces a real ambivalence towards aesthetics.
The prohibition against representation can already be found in the Ten Commandments. The Jewish brand of monotheism not only forbids worshiping or fashioning idols, it forbids any attempt to depict the Divine. The G-d of Israel is absolute, ineffable, infinite, unfathomable, and so any attempt to capture Him through artistic means can only ever be a corruption. Observant Jews are even careful about speaking (and writing) of G-d. Instead we use the moniker “Hashem”: The Name. That’s it.
Despite… rich and authentic religious artistic traditions, Judaism also evinces a real ambivalence towards aesthetics.
This prohibition extends out further to certain restrictions on depicting divine entities like angels, celestial bodies like the sun and moon, and anything created in “His Image”—namely, human beings. To this we also have to add the concerns about modesty that apply to any display of the human body. In addition to making pagan representations of the deity anathema, all these laws put much of the Western artistic tradition under suspicion.
Take care for yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord, your G-d, that He made with you, and you make for yourselves a statue—an image of anything—that the Lord, your G-d, commanded you (Deut. 4:23).
But let us go even further, with a novel reading of this verse by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Morgenstern, the Kotzker Rebbe. He notes that there seems to be a missing word here: The Torah commands us against making statues and images. In that case, shouldn’t it read: “Take care lest you make an image, which the Lord has commanded you not to do”? As written, the verse seems to be saying the precise opposite of what it means.
Just as the Torah forbids us against making representations of false gods as well as the One True G-d, the Kotzker warns us not only against making art of things forbidden to us, but also of making “an image” or “an idol” of authentic religious experience. In his reading, the verse is saying: Don’t make a statue of that which G-d has commanded you. Don’t make an idol of religion.
Put into practice, the Kotzker’s teachings translate into a commitment to absolute authenticity and a disdain for external appearances. His followers, and the Chasidic groups that trace their lineage to him—like the Gerrer dynasty—tend towards an almost austere minimalism. This preference for understated simplicity is sometimes manifested quite literally: For years, the exterior of the central Gerrer synagogue in Jerusalem—by some measures the largest synagogue in the world—was uncompleted; the building had no facade.
Despite the differences between the groups, there are some obvious parallels among Chabad Chasidim. Unlike in most other Chasidic groups, the rebbe wears no special garb, and would pray in near silence, almost without any external movement. Chabad’s headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway, remains perpetually incomplete. In fact, in some ways Chabad goes even further: Gerrer chassidim do have the custom to decorate their sukkahs.
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But what does it mean to aestheticize religion? A recent example of the phenomenon comes to mind in the various anti-Israel protests that have been occupying campuses, government buildings, and the streets of our cities. Alongside the expected keffiyehs and Palestinian flags being waved about, and the shocking but perhaps unsurprising Hamas banners, was the sight, here and there, of a tallit. Typically associated with anti-Israel organizations, these tallit-toters are eager to assert that they are Jewish, very Jewish in fact.
Two Jews, three opinions, they say. And indeed Jewish identity can comfortably contain a wide range of political views. Professing deeply held Jewish beliefs, or living the halachically observant lifestyle that goes along with it, does not confine a person to any one particular view on the State of Israel, or of Jewish political power, or of the plight of the Palestinians for that matter. But wearing a tallit when one is not in prayer, making Havdalah in the middle of Shabbat, or wielding around Jewish sayings and symbols to make a rhetorical point, reduces religion to a ploy, a political play, and a means of maneuvering for the moral high ground. It is Judaism as affectation—a costume.
We don’t even need to reach for such vulgar examples. There are much smaller, more innocent ways in which we all aestheticize Judaism. It is simply what happens when the appearance of Jewishness becomes more important than any deeper substance.
Alongside the expected keffiyehs and Palestinian flags being waved about, and the shocking but perhaps unsurprising Hamas banners, was the sight, here and there, of a tallit. Typically associated with anti-Israel organizations, these tallit-toters are eager to assert that they are Jewish, very Jewish in fact.
It is when we reduce a spiritual identity to a thin veneer. It is when the Jewish culture becomes severed from commitment, from any deeper context, from the rich traditions that gave birth to it. It’s “kosher-style” food. It is splurging on a beautiful mezuzah case while neglecting the parchment that’s supposed to go inside it. It’s a magnificent synagogue turned into a tourist attraction, where the sounds of prayer have long faded away. It’s when we care more about the image of our religious institutions than what takes place inside them. It’s a Jewish organization turned so completely outward, entirely preoccupied by PR, donor relations and social media metrics. It’s when universal appeal takes over any particularistic substance. It’s Jewishness reduced to schmaltz, Yiddish kitsch, a grab bag of Woody Allen references, and a few jokes about Ashkenazic lactose intolerance. Fiddler on the Roof with a side of potato knish. It’s dressing up in all the trappings of ultra-Orthodoxy while forgetting the obligations we owe our fellow human beings.
In other words, we all do it. Ever since Adam and Eve ate from that tree, human beings have been paying attention to how they look; some people have a mirror in every room of the house, but everybody catches their own reflection in the window from time to time.
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But it’s not quite right to say the Chasidic approach is to do away with aesthetics altogether. One teaching of the Maggid of Mezeritch is particularly illuminating on this point. The Maggid discusses the story of Joseph, as related in Genesis 39, in which the young son of Jacob finds himself working as a slave in the house of Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s ministers, when his master’s wife attempts to seduce him. According to the Talmud, Joseph comes too close to sin—but is suddenly saved when “the image of his father appeared to him in the window.” It is at this point that Joseph decides to run outside, away from the wife of Potiphar and the catastrophe that betraying his master, and his father’s ideals, would have brought on.
What could this mean? What made Joseph, a world away from his father in the Land of Canaan—stuck in the godforsaken home of an Egyptian nobleman—suddenly think of Jacob at that moment? According to the Maggid, the Talmud is in fact referring to “Supernal Beauty,” or tiferet, the spiritual trait associated with Jacob. To tempt him, the wife of Potiphar “would beautify herself,” the Maggid goes on to say—but in this temporal beauty, Joseph saw the hint of a higher, divine kind of beauty. This was what saved him from sin.
When it serves as a mirror to the divine, when it can be sublimated inward and upward, then beauty can elevate, inspire, and serve a higher purpose. But when it points to nothing beyond itself, when it connects to nothing more than physical lust, then it spells the path to spiritual ruin. And just as beauty that extends only as deep as skin quickly loses its appeal, so religious aesthetics that have nothing deeper to sustain them quickly fade.
Which brings us back to the sukkah decorations. In a 1969 talk, the Rebbe brought up the oddly contradictory Chabad reluctance to spruce up the sukkah. Citing the great codifier Maimonides, he noted that
everything given for the sake of the Almighty, who is good, should be of the most attractive and highest quality. If one builds a house of prayer, it should be more attractive than his own dwelling. If he feeds a hungry person, he should feed him from the best and most tasty foods on his table. If he clothes one who is naked, he should clothe him with his attractive garments. If he consecrates something, he should consecrate the best of his possession. And so [Leviticus 3:16] states: “All of the superior quality should be given to G-d.”
Just as beauty that only extends as deep as skin quickly loses its appeal, so religious aesthetics that have nothing deeper to sustain them quickly fade.
Why then, do we suddenly skimp when it comes to the Sukkah? The answer he proposed is subtle: When the Talmud, and Maimonides in its wake, speak about making a beautiful sukkah, a beautiful lulav, or a beautiful shofar, they are exhorting us to beautify the mitzvah itself. The walls and sechach themselves should be as handsome and beautiful to the utmost. However, in popular practice, sukkah decorations are merely additions to the structure, and not a part of it. In that case, adding window dressing to the mitzvah will simply serve to distract from it.
[H]ere there is a sukkah made entirely according to the Torah, built, complete, imbued with holiness… only for someone to come along and add a superficial veneer that is physically beautiful (not a holy garment)—in order so that it should have a more attractive appearance!
Getting caught up in the external aesthetics eventually results in the inability to see the beauty of the mitzvah itself. But even here, as he explains the deeper significance of the Chabad attitude towards the sukkah, the Rebbe is careful not to reject the idea of sukkah decorations out of hand. After all, decorating the Sukkah is undoubtedly an authentic Jewish practice, with a long and rich history. If the sages of the Talmud themselves are said to have used noyei sukkah, as they are called, then they must be something more to them.
The answer, says the Rebbe, is that for those sages of yore, the sukkah decorations were fully subsumed by the sukkah; it was as if they saw straight through, and saw only the beauty of the sukkah itself. Put differently, the aesthetic element can enhance a mitzvah when it is fully integrated within it. But once there is a separation between the mitzvah and the ornament, when the religious-spiritual experience becomes concealed or reduced to its cultural-aesthetic veneer, then those decorations subtract more than they add.
Perhaps the secret to the simplicity of the Chabad sukkah is not just about the decorations. The larger lesson, and the one with universal applicability, is about the aestheticization of Jewish life: On the one hand, the risks, the tragedy, and the shame in accepting a thin cultural gruel as a substitute for authentic religious connection. And on the other hand, fully appreciating the beauty of Jewish life and its many magnificent traditions—intellectual, sartorial, cultural, culinary, you name it—ought to make us want to explore more.
All of those charms, superficial though they may be, beckon us forward. They call on us to insist on more, and then something more than that. Follow that ornament up the string from which it hangs, all the way up to the rafters, and then to the sechach fronds floating above; stretch your hand past that sparkling tinsel; the mitzvah shines with its own light. The sukkah is already beautiful.
This article appears in the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of Lubavitch International, to subscribe to the magazine, click here.
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