Parsha in Four by E ytan Kobre

Betw ee n the Lines

Doing Without?

By Eytan Kobre

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Henry David Thoreau

In the late 1800s, a Scottish preacher named John Watson came upon one of his congregants grieving deeply. The man’s investments soured, and he endured crushing financial losses. Desperately stricken by this economic setback, the man cried, “Everything is gone!”

“Oh,” Watson said, “I’m sorry to hear your kind gentle wife is dead.” The man pulled his head from his hands and looked up. “What? My wife? She’s not dead.”

“Oh,” Watson continued. “Well, I’m saddened that your house has burned to the ground.”

The man looked stumped. “My house is just fine.”

“Oh,” Watson continued. “Then I’m sorry you have no bread to eat or water to drink.”

The man couldn’t understand it. “Preacher, I have plenty to eat and drink.”

The pastor went on listing all the man’s blessings and commiserating about his non-existent losses.

“With all due respect, Preacher,” said the congregant, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I still have all those things!”

“Then come to your senses, man! You still have the things that are worthwhile!”

Moshe Rabbeinu’s assembly of the Jewish people “at the door of the tent of meeting” (Vayikra 8:3) is one of the instances where a “minimal held a multitude” (Rashi, Vayikra 8:3). While the Mishkan courtyard consisted of fewer than 5,000 square cubits, it somehow managed to contain 600,000 people (“all the congregation”). The Chasam Sofer explains that this miracle was intended to emphasize a simple but stark contrast: while the Mishkan was a magnificent structure, made of the finest, most precious materials, the Jewish people should be content with the simple, downto-earth lives expressed through crowding into a small space.

Indeed, “one who wishes to reach the will of his Creator should enter through the narrow entrance that the pious ones endure” (Chovos HaLevavos, Sha’ar HaTeshuva Chapter 10). Material excess and luxury is befitting G-d’s House; we, however,

should be guided by austerity.

Our ideal is a life of “eating bread with salt, drinking water in small measure, sleeping on the ground, and leading lives of deprivation” (Avos 6:4). While there is some debate as to whether such a life is required – it is at least strongly recommended (compare Meiri and Medrash Shmuel with Rashi and Machzor Vitri, Avos 6:4; Kalla Rabasi, Chapter 8; Binyan Olam, Chapter 13). “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me my allotted bread” (Mishlei 30:8; see also Yalkut Me’am Loez, Bamidbar 33:2; Rashi, Shemos 16:8). Before consuming Torah, one ought to pray that he not indulge material excesses (see Tosfos, Kesubos 104a).

This way of life has always been the hallmark of our holy ancestors. It was the request of Yaakov Avinu for just “bread to eat and clothes to wear” (Bereishis 28:20). Esther, too, was seen as the paradigm of austerity for “not requesting anything” from Achashveirosh (Esther 2:15; see Da’as Chochma U’Mussar, Vol. 1, pg. 78). Because the righteous “do not ask for extras or luxuries. They only ask what is necessary to live, without which man cannot survive” (Rabbeinu Bachaye, Bereishis 28:20).

Sufficing with less is a foundational precept of the Torah (Even Sh’leima, Chapter 3) and “an exceptionally important and precious attribute” (Ma’alos HaMiddos, No. 21; see Kuntres Sefas Tamim 5). Indeed, when the founder of the Bais Yaakov movement in America, Rebbetzin Vichna Kaplan, asked R’ Shraga Feivel Mendelowitz what to emphasize in the education of young American Jewish girls, he responded, “being content with less.”

To be sure, wealth is not the problem, and asceticism is not the answer. The Torah is not opposed to wealth per se (see e.g. Vayikra 26:3-13; Devarim 11:13-16; Devarim 25:15; Mishlei 22:4; Avos 6:8; Ma’alos HaMiddos No. 19), nor does it approve of asceticism (Nedarim 10a; Nedarim 22a; Taanis 11a; Yerushalmi, Nedarim 9:1; Yerushlami, Kiddushin 4:12; Rambam, Dei’os 3:1). Excess materialism is the problem. And – whether we know it or not – we are struggling mightily for the answer.

Excessive materialism makes one arrogant (Orchos Tzaddikim, Chapter 14; Maharsha, Berachos 57b), and it causes sin (Devarim 32:15; Mishlei 30:9; Berachos 32b; Chochma U’Mussar, Vol. 1, pg. 115). Even worse, it enslaves us to the point where our very lives depend on it.

A poor man once came to R’ Nechemia, who asked the poor man what he was accustomed to eating. When the poor man replied that he was accustomed to eating fatty meat and aged wine (delicacies given to him by others), R’ Nechemia asked if he wished to join him in a meal of simple beans. The poor man agreed, but, after eating the beans, he died. R’ Nechemia wasn’t faulted for the poor man’s death; it was the poor man’s inability to adjust to eating anything but the delicacies to which he had become accustomed (Kesubos 67b; see also Chullin 84a [“A parent should not accustom his children to eat meat and wine”]).

R’ Yechezkel Abramsky told of how he, as a 17-year-old boy, sought admission into the Novardok yeshiva and visited the home of its leader, the Alter of Novardok. The Alter didn’t even have an extra chair in his home, but he was so impressed with the young man that he asked his grandson to prepare a cup of sweet tea for R’ Yechezkel. But the Alter didn’t even have sugar in his house, so he sent his grandson to the store to purchase one cube of sugar for R’ Yechezkel’s tea.

R’ Yaakov Galinsky was once with the Steipler Gaon when one of the Steipler’s young grandchildren walked in with a candy and asked his holy grandfather whether the candy had a hechsher. The Steipler smiled, bemoaning his generation’s acceptance of material excess as a given. “See? They no longer ask whether it is fitting and proper to eat a candy. They ask only if it is kosher.”

The rejection of material excess is a particularly compelling aspect of Pesach.

When Pharaoh received the troubling news that a savior for the Jewish people was born, he commanded that all newborn boys be thrown into the Nile River. This was no coincidence, according to R’ Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Nor did Pharaoh lack other, more conventional means for killing Jews. The Nile River was chosen for a reason.

Rainfall in Egypt is a scarcity; Egypt thrived only because of the fertile Nile River, which became synonymous with Egyptian excess and materialism. Pharaoh knew the secret to Jewish continuity was the detachment from excess and luxury, and he meant to snuff out that spiritual life by drowning the Jews – literally and metaphorically – in the Nile River and the material excesses it came to represent.

It is perhaps no coincidence that in their triumphant departure from Egypt, the Jewish people still clung to their “bread of affliction” despite also carrying out “abundant possession” courtesy of the Egyptians. It is the nature of a repressed and newly-freed person to indulge, perhaps even overindulge, in material comforts and luxuries. Not so with the Jewish people. They made a point of continuing to subsist on the “bread of affliction” (made of just flour and water; no additives [Pesachim 36a]) to demonstrate a rejection of materialism and a contentedness with less (Ksav Sofer, Devarim 16:3).

And we reaffirm that notion every year on Pesach: “Do not eat on it leavened bread; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction...in order to remember the day you left Egypt all the days of your life” (Devarim 16:3). We eat the “bread of affliction” (made with just flour and water; no additives) just as we rejected excess and materialism on “the day [we] left Egypt,” so too we are to do so now (Ksav Sofer, Devarim 16:3).

But we seem to be drowning in our own present-day Nile River of material excess.

Our weddings are more profligate than ever (and they are held for more people than should ever be at a wedding). Our food demands and preferences are more extravagant and exacting than ever. We build and buy opulent homes, better suited for museum displays than for actual living. We dress our children in monarchical clothing that can only produce conceitedness. And perhaps the spiritual highlight of the year – our Seder nights – have been reduced to the material grandeur (but spiritual emptiness) of “programs” in far-flung locales.

And it’s not just that we indulge in these rank (over)materialistic

pursuits; that could be justified, if not condoned. We actually glorify them. Just flip through the glossy weekly “kosher” magazines, which sandwich moving accounts of the asceticism of our saintly leaders between cutting-edge advertisements for every material excess not expressly forbidden by Torah law: dinosaur-sized cuts of meat, uberhigh-end kitchens, appliances, and furniture; haute couture for ourselves and gaudy clothing for our children; multi-million dollar apartments in Israel (marketed as second homes, mind you). We are drowning in materialism, and we seem giddy about it.

Don’t get me wrong: one may and should enjoy the material good this world has to offer. But it cannot become an obsession (and it has).

Perhaps the current predicament will have a halo effect and force us – wittingly or otherwise – to regain control of our lives.

There are no lavish weddings now – just the genuine joy of a bride and groom and their close loved ones celebrating with real joy, not in an opulent hotel or hall but on streets and in parking lots. There is no (or less) obsession with the fanciest cuts of meat and showy haute couture that has suffocated Shabbos and Yom Tov in recent years – just the gratitude that we have plentiful food and clean respectable clothing and the ability to breathe freely. There are no Pesach “programs” in far-flung locales now – just the warmth of our own homes and our own families to connect us to generations past.

It’s almost as if the world is returning to the way it used to be. So we wonder. Is this what it’s like to do without? Maybe. But maybe this is closer to the way it ought to be.

Eytan Kobre is a writer, speaker, and attorney living in Kew Gardens Hills. Questions? Comments? Suggestions? E-mail eakobre@outlook.com.

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