Shmini Atzeret Yizkor 5765-2004

Sermon: Rabbi Philip Pohl

The Washington Post has a new monthly feature that I find most interesting.

On the first Sunday of every month, in the Metro Section of the Washington Post Sunday edition, there appears a feature called “On Faith.”

This, of course, is in addition to the regular religion page that appears in the Shabbos edition of the paper.

Last Sunday, the “On Faith” article was entitled, “Without Clutter, A Path to Clarity.”

For reasons that I hope will become clear very soon, I especially appreciated reading this article during the holiday of Sukkot and just before the concluding festival of Shemini Atzeret.

Before I get to explain those connections to clutter, or should I say anti-clutter, let me state for the record that I have a clutter problem.

Most often you can discover this just by walking into my synagogue office. Yes, I have a much larger office now than I had previously, and, while the clutter seems, I think, less formidable than it was in the past, if I honestly evaluate the situation, that is only temporary.

Unless I change, unless my habits change, the amount of space will have no impact upon the amount of clutter in my life.

What I really appreciated about this article was that while I knew that clutter was an issue, I never quite thought about it as a serious spiritual issue.

I only thought about this as an organizational, planning, prioritizing kind of issue. But it’s deeper than that. Even my use of the word “prioritizing” should indicate that it’s more than just an organizational issue.

Our priorities are really ultimately determined by our values, and our values are shaped by our spiritual makeup, at least to a certain extent.

And so, even just the placement of this article in the “On Faith” column of the Metro Section, as opposed to some feature in the “Style Section,” forced me to think about this issue from a somewhat different and a more religious/spiritual/Jewish perspective.

The basic idea here is that we all have too much stuff, and most of us don’t know what to do with it and where to put it. Not only is it cluttering up our space - it is also cluttering up our spirit.

The Washington Post reports that many of us are beginning to “experience what religious leaders and lifestyle experts describe as a growing appreciation by many Americans that an overabundance of material goods can be a drag on spiritual development. Increasingly, de-cluttering and downsizing are being viewed in a spiritual context, as ways to remove distractions to inner growth.”

Without a doubt, for many of us, it has come true that the more items we own, the more time and money we have to spend on maintenance of those items.

While it may be pleasurable to own several cars, and to furnish many rooms in our homes with several computers, cable television, cell phones, ipods, palm pilots, the more time it takes to care for these items.

This means we then have less time to care for ourselves, to nurture ourselves, to nurture our relationships, to spend time on activities which are liberating, renewing, and rejuvenating as opposed to items that create clutter and literally get in the way.

There is a national movement called “Voluntary Simplicity.” According to the Washington Post, “the movement has drawn in people who want to cut back on possessions and slow their pace of life. While many have joined because of environmental concerns, others are attracted by the spiritual benefits.

A woman named Winifred Roberts of Silver Spring, formerly a corporate lawyer working a 70-hour week, is quoted as follows after her decision to join into the “Voluntary Simplicity” philosophy –

“Life was too complicated and too empty, and as I
started to do things to change that, I started feeling more
spiritual and religious….”

What an interesting juxtaposition of phrases, “too complicated and too empty.”

The holiday of Sukkot is just the opposite – it is not very complicated and it represents that which is most full. It takes place, of course, at the time when we see the full moon.
We move from the complications of dwelling within our regular households, to the much more simplistic and less complicated Sukkah.

Somehow, we squeeze into the sukkah more people than we can fit into a much larger dining room under so-called “normal” circumstances.

The beautiful tables that grace our kitchen and dining room, which are surrounded by comfortable, luxurious chairs, are now replaced by rickety folding tables and flimsy chairs or benches inside the sukkah.

When the weather is nice, the only problem is the bees. How glorious it is to get those extra opportunities to spend time outdoors when we know, soon enough, those days will be very limited and weather conditions will be too inclement.

We move from the simha of Sukkot to cabin fever too quickly, and as we experience that transition, we are reminded by this most wonderful and beautiful of holidays, of those aspects of life that are truly most important.

Sukkot is indeed the anti-clutter holiday. While there may not be enough space in the sukkah, I rarely see a sukkah that looks cluttered.

While our homes may have more than enough space for the number of people who live in them, I often see, homes that are very cluttered.

And this series of festivals ends really with the holiday we celebrate today – Shemini Atzeret.

On this day, it’s really back to the basics. We’re not even obligated to use lulav and etrog, or sit in the sukkah, although certainly we can do so if we wish, that is, sit in the sukkah.

There are no symbols to this holiday – no clutter – nothing we need to do other than after these most intense weeks of the year, face God straight on, face our loved ones, straight on, - face ourselves, straight on.

We ended the old year about three weeks ago. We spent many days both alone and together, reprioritizing, reviewing, and reorienting ourselves for the new year that has just begun.

Spiritually and symbolically, we’ve sifted through all the clutter of our lives that has remained from the last year or previous years. Now it’s finally time to straighten it all out and move forward.

And before this so-called “regular year” begins, we spend another part of this day reviewing the relationships in our lives that have inevitably been removed from all clutter.

We remember our loved ones who have passed on, our parents, our siblings, our spouses, our children, our friends, our partners, and our teachers. Much of the baggage and clutter that gets in the way of our relationships now seems diminished.

Most of the complications are gone, while most of the memories remain strong.

We truly realize that what’s important in life is not what we possess, but rather what we share.

And we understand that the best things to share, the items that give us the most satisfaction and do not wither or fade away, are those that are not material in nature.

A few years ago, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Chief Rabbi of Ephrata and about whom you’ve heard me speak many times, wrote the following:

“There is a stirring Yiddish song called a “tallisel” (a small prayer shawl) in which a passerby hears a forlorn cry which seems to be emanating from an empty house. Much to the surprise of the stranger, he sees a prayer-shawl weeping. ‘My owner went on vacation. He took his finest clothes, he took a good deal of cash, he took his wife’s jewelry, he took his golf clubs – but me he left behind!’ ‘Be comforted,’ says the passerby, ‘there will come a time when the owner of the house will go to an even longer journey, the last journey of his life. At that time he will leave behind his fine clothes, he will leave behind all of his cash, he will leave behind his wife’s jewelry, he will leave behind his golf clubs, oh, but you, tallisel, he will take with him.’”

As we enter the beginning of the rest of the year, let us greet this new year of life with the reality we all accept and understand when we see others faced with the end of life – let us treasure that which will sustain and comfort us wherever we may be, whether within the comfort of our own homes, or visiting the temporary dwelling of the sukkah. Amen.