Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld
October 5-7, 2023 • 22-23 Tishrei 5784 • Shmini Atzeret-Simchat Torah (Deut 15-16).
The purpose of this email is to simplify the Friday night dinner conversation... please forward/print/share.
Happy birthday shout-out to Tom in Pasadena!
Happy birthday shout-out to Tom in Pasadena!
Is life too complicated?
Or is it just me?
Work, family, relationships - that's the old fashioned kind of complicated.
I'm referring to the layers on top of all that - the password resets and lost emails and missed text messages, the software updates that cause apps to malfunction, the wifi hiccups, the constant hum of spam and the constant drip-drip of scams, the unrecognized credit card charges, the speed cameras, the constant battery charging and changing, the non-stop (doom-and-gloom) news cycle...
In a by-gone era, when you went shopping you'd feel lucky if you found a ripe apple. Just finding a single crispy Golden Delicious or Granny Smith was enough to put you over the moon. You could take that treasure home and cut it into ten pieces and everyone in the family would get one slice for dessert and everyone was ecstatic.
But now our shopping is so extravagant that we can't even call it going to the market - now it's the super-market (in France they one-upped us with the hyper-market) - and in these mega-super-duper-hyper-meta-markets there isn't one kind of apple, there are 50 varieties of everything from cereal to toothbrushes, and we think we're so lucky because we have so many options but in fact this epoque has more anxiety and depression than any other time in history.
Psychology Professor Barry Schwartz argues in his Paradox of Choice (or watch his 15-minute Ted Talk) that too many choices can be exhausting and paralyzing.
We Jews have a wonderful pause button on being busy - it's called Shabbat. But try asking this question at your table: What's the Torah's antidote to choice-overload?
It's called Sukkot, and it's more of an inoculation than an antidote.
The basic idea: after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, spend a week living simply. Not as rough as camping, but in that direction — eat and sleep in a temporary hut on the deck or in the back yard. Keep it simple, nothing fancy, and meditate on how little you truly require to be happy.
The photo above is our family's new sukkah, built by committee. Although we managed to fill it up this year, it's modular and can be easily expanded. Therefore, I'm giving you plenty of advance notice: I hereby extend an invitation to you for next year to come and dwell with us and enjoy a real haven from complicated - this is the zone of simplicity to crown the High Holidays and delay the resumption of "real life" by a few more days....
Combining this theme with last week's eclecticism theme, here's one more question for your table:
Imagine someone built an enormous sukkah with unlimited capacity, and they invited every Jewish person in town - would you want to be there?
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom
and a Happy Sukkot,
and a Happy Shmini Atzeret,
and a Happy Simchat Torah,
Alexander Seinfeld
Or is it just me?
Work, family, relationships - that's the old fashioned kind of complicated.
I'm referring to the layers on top of all that - the password resets and lost emails and missed text messages, the software updates that cause apps to malfunction, the wifi hiccups, the constant hum of spam and the constant drip-drip of scams, the unrecognized credit card charges, the speed cameras, the constant battery charging and changing, the non-stop (doom-and-gloom) news cycle...
In a by-gone era, when you went shopping you'd feel lucky if you found a ripe apple. Just finding a single crispy Golden Delicious or Granny Smith was enough to put you over the moon. You could take that treasure home and cut it into ten pieces and everyone in the family would get one slice for dessert and everyone was ecstatic.
But now our shopping is so extravagant that we can't even call it going to the market - now it's the super-market (in France they one-upped us with the hyper-market) - and in these mega-super-duper-hyper-meta-markets there isn't one kind of apple, there are 50 varieties of everything from cereal to toothbrushes, and we think we're so lucky because we have so many options but in fact this epoque has more anxiety and depression than any other time in history.
Psychology Professor Barry Schwartz argues in his Paradox of Choice (or watch his 15-minute Ted Talk) that too many choices can be exhausting and paralyzing.
We Jews have a wonderful pause button on being busy - it's called Shabbat. But try asking this question at your table: What's the Torah's antidote to choice-overload?
It's called Sukkot, and it's more of an inoculation than an antidote.
The basic idea: after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, spend a week living simply. Not as rough as camping, but in that direction — eat and sleep in a temporary hut on the deck or in the back yard. Keep it simple, nothing fancy, and meditate on how little you truly require to be happy.
The photo above is our family's new sukkah, built by committee. Although we managed to fill it up this year, it's modular and can be easily expanded. Therefore, I'm giving you plenty of advance notice: I hereby extend an invitation to you for next year to come and dwell with us and enjoy a real haven from complicated - this is the zone of simplicity to crown the High Holidays and delay the resumption of "real life" by a few more days....
Combining this theme with last week's eclecticism theme, here's one more question for your table:
Imagine someone built an enormous sukkah with unlimited capacity, and they invited every Jewish person in town - would you want to be there?
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom
and a Happy Sukkot,
and a Happy Shmini Atzeret,
and a Happy Simchat Torah,
Alexander Seinfeld
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