The Satisfaction of Less

Click here to watch Rabbi Aaron Potek's Rosh Hashanah sermon.

One evening last week, I got a text from my friend who was at the dog park across the street.

“Dude! Your fire alarm is going off!”

Just over a week before the high holidays, I wasn’t about to let a fire alarm derail me from my work.

Then she sends another text: “People are leaving your building!”

A few minutes later, another: “Fire trucks are here!”

I look out my window, and the ladder from the fire truck is literally going up directly over my apartment. Firefighters are running into my building.

“OK, I guess a fire alarm is going to derail my work afterall. Time to leave.” And then the classic hypothetical question that was no longer hypothetical: “What do I take with me?” I couldn’t come up with a compelling answer. My passport? Not really using that these days. My dining table? Can’t carry that down. My journals?

Nothing I owned felt important enough that I couldn’t live without it... so I just walked outside empty-handed.

By that point they were already telling us we could come back inside, but back in my place looking around, I kept wondering:

“Is it bad that I didn’t feel like I really needed anything?”

The Desert Analogy

Throughout these past six months, the image of the ancient Israelites wandering in the desert keeps coming to my mind and continues to resonate.

Similar to those wandering Israelites, we’ve lived in the liminal space between where we’re coming from and where we’re hoping to go... without a map for how to move forward. Our lives have been somewhat on pause - or at least oscillating between stop and start. We’ve made some plans. We’ve canceled some plans. Time has certainly moved forward, I think, but also, like, what is time any more?

This has also been a period of time marked by fear and uncertainty, feelings the desert also elicits. It’s dark. It’s lonely.

Another aspect of the desert, one that I’d like to focus on tonight, is the way it reduces life to its most elemental features.

In tomorrow’s Torah reading, we’ll read about Hagar, Abraham’s maidservant, who along with their son gets cast out into the desert with just some bread and water. It’s a complicated story I won’t unpack now, but it happens to be the very first story of someone struggling to survive in the desert, a precursor, in a way, to the journey that the Israrelites would go on centuries later. Suffice it to say, the desert is a place without many resources, and Hagar fears for her life and the life of her child. But, spoiler alert - with God’s help, she realizes that she is able to survive with exactly what she has.

I know several people who left DC in March or April for a weekend, or a few days, with just a change or two of clothes and some toiletries… and then ended up not returning for 3, 4, even 5 months. For multiple months, they rotated between 3 outfits, cooked all their meals, and saw only a handful of people. Even those of us who didn’t have that exact experience have been living with far less than we’re used to. Like Hagar in the desert, we have tapped into and even been surprised by our own resourcefulness and resilience.

Of course, for most of us, the experience of living through this pandemic has not been the same as being in an actual desert with only bread and water. But we have experienced a major change from what we’ve become accustomed to. Stripped of our usual comforts, we’ve adapted to this less familiar, more sparse reality. And from within this more-limited life, many of us have discovered that we don’t need as much as we thought we did to be happy. We can get by with less. Way less.

So, Is Any Of This Meant To Be A Lasting Lesson?

So, is realizing that we don’t need much just an interesting fact about the human ability to adapt and survive, or is there a deeper lesson here? Just because we can get by with less doesn’t mean we should get by with less.

At some point, this will all pass, probably within this upcoming year. At some point, each of us will be confronted with the choice: do we internalize anything we’ve learned during all this, or do we run back to the way things were? Are there any lessons from this sojourning in the desert that we’re meant to take with us into the promised land?

Thesis: To Live More Simply. To Be Live for Satisfaction.

I’d like to suggest one lesson that I hope we can take with us from this period of our lives, and that is - quite simply - to live more simply. To continue to clarify within ourselves what it is we really need to be happy, and to not strive for more than that. To further distinguish between what we need and what we want, and to work on being satisfied with only what we need.

We’ve been given a taste of that lifestyle, which I believe is a critical step in achieving both personal satisfaction and a more just society.

Aspect #1: Lead to Satisfaction

First, let’s first talk about personal satisfaction.

Living a simpler life allows us to more easily focus on what really matters. Even if, deep down, we know that many of the things we’ve been missing right now are conveniences, luxuries, and indulgences, I think some of us have begun to realize how much we structured our lives around those things. Yet, not only have we survived without those things, but in their absence - we’ve gained a new perspective about what is essential - known in Hebrew as ikar - and what is secondary - in Hebrew known as tefel.

The ancient Israelites, while wandering in the desert, survived on very little as well - eating only manna for the entire 40 years. Surely God could have given them whatever food they wanted. After so many years of oppression, why didn’t God reward them with some fun treats, raining down sushi and gummy worms? What was God trying to teach them by having them subsist on only manna for 40 years?

Perhaps the lesson was about the importance of living simply, of pursuing satiation over indulgence, and of privileging the ikar - what is essential - over what is secondary - tefel. Through having only their most basic needs fulfilled, the Israelites learned to distinguish between what was necessary, and what was excess.

COVID has taught many of us a similar lesson, helping us distinguish between what we can and cannot live without.

This distinction is so important in an age where social media and unchecked capitalism try to distort and warp our understanding of what we do and don’t need. I’ve been tricked too many times into buying something I thought I couldn’t live without, only to shove it in a drawer shortly after it arrived, never to be used again.

Dr. Laurie Santos is a professor at Yale who teaches an online class (that many of you may have enrolled in during quarantine) called “The Science of Well-Being.” In one of her lectures she says:

COVID has reminded us what we already know yet don’t always put into practice: What brings us happiness is rarely, if ever, material possessions or physical pleasures.

Let me be clear: I’m not advocating for depriving yourself or never enjoying life. Judaism is not a monastic religion - we believe the world was meant to be enjoyed, and we don’t encourage suffering (well, except for maybe on Yom Kippur, but that’s another story).

The spiritual work is in identifying what you truly need and in being content with that. Not deprivation, but not excess either. To find the middle road, which is satisfaction.

This is the singular (non-age-related) word used to describe our forefather Abraham’s life when he died. The Torah writes:

Why that descriptor? And what does it mean? Nachmanides, a famous 13th century Sephardic rabbi (ad loc.) offers an answer

This word “satisfied” is used again towards the end of the Torah, when Moses instructs the Israelites that, upon entering the promised land, they “shall eat and be satisfied (vesavata) and bless.” (Deuteronomy 8:10) Moses then warns them: “Lest your heart grow haughty.” (Deuteronomy 8:14). The secret to a happy life, the Torah seems to suggest again, is to set your heart’s desire to satisfaction - and don’t let your heart grow haughty by desiring more and more.

Years later, in the first and second centuries of the common era, Ben Zoma offered a similar lesson (Ethics of Our Ancestors 4:1):

Happiness and contentment are inextricably linked. The pursuit of more and more will leave you with less and less. As the Talmudic idiom goes:

Aspect #2: Living Simply as Critical Piece of Justice Work

Judaism compels us not only to pursue happiness for ourselves but also to pursue justice for others. And reevaluating what we really need is a critical component of that work, too.

We live in a country with a vast and growing chasm between the haves and the have nots - a chasm that COVID has highlighted. And I hate to point it out, but most of us listening tonight are part of the “haves.” I don’t have the solution to wealth inequality, but I do know that a contributing factor to this problem is some people thinking they need - and deserve - more than others.

Once again, the manna in the desert can provide us with insight and inspiration. We’re told that the Israelites were commanded:

The text isn’t clear: does everyone get to take what they think they need, or does everyone take one omer per person?

Amazingly, the Sforno, a 16th Century Italian commentator on the Torah, says: “both.” Everyone gathered what they thought they needed, but no matter how much anyone gathered, a miracle occurred and everyone ended up with the exact same portion.

Of course, we all have different types and degrees of needs. But another lesson the Torah is teaching us through the symbol of the manna - in addition to the importance of living simply - is that we might perceive that our needs are more varying than they really are. At the core, we all pretty much need and deserve the same things. That’s because, at our core, we are all fundamentally equal and are all made in “the image of God” (Genesis 1:26). This is a foundational idea in Jewish ethics.

Living out this vision of radical equality starts with the understanding that our needs are all equally important, and, more or less, equal. The more we can live with this consciousness, the more we might feel compelled to push for a society that meets everyone’s needs, not just some.

Conclusion

There’s a series of gratitude blessings that Jews say every morning when we wake up known as Birchot Hashachar - blessings for being free, for the clothes on our bodies, for our different privileges and abilities, etc.

One of the blessings has always stood out to me, and it feels especially relevant here:

Baruch ata hashem elokeinu melech ha’olam - she’asi li kol tzarki.

Blessed are you God Sovereign of the Universe - who has given me everything I need.

5780 was a hard year - a year we were forced to live with less. It wasn’t always easy, but it also brought to focus what matters to us and what doesn’t.

5781 might be just as hard. It might be even harder. But as Jews have demonstrated throughout history - we are resilient, and we will make it through to the other side.

When we finally do, we’ll have a choice: Will we run back to regain all that we feel we feel we’ve lost or left behind? Or will we look around, take stock, take a breath, and recognize that we actually have everything we need?

Shana tova.