For Sukkot
Asparagus and Toast: Justice, Simplicity, and Gratitude

BY RABBI NANCY FUCHS-KREIMER

Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1881-1983), the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, is well known for his theological radicalism. Less well known is his concern for issues of economic justice and his attraction to radical social thought.

According to the entries in his voluminous diaries, recently published as Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan: 1913-1934 (Mel Scult, editor), from the very beginning of his career as a young Orthodox rabbi, Kaplan agonized over his rabbinic role serving wealthy capitalist Jews in a synagogue in New York City, when his heart was with the workers. In fact, Kaplan lost his first pulpit in New York City in the early 1920's in part because of his outspoken support of workers' rights.

He made his views on economic conditions clear in his sermons, advocating a minimum wage, the five-day work week, and workers sharing in management. Even later when he created a congregation whose members supported his religious innovations, he found himself critical and even contemptuous of their materialism and complacency with the social order. He agreed with George Bernard Shaw's comment that "under the present system, clergy are no more than chaplains of pirate ships." Yet, he added, "what ships have greater need of chaplains?"

Kaplan appears to have loved the holiday of Sukkot, and relished the social implications of a holiday whose salient theme, in his view, was a return to nature and to simplicity, as opposed to the excesses of civilization-materialism, high living, and injustice. In The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion, Kaplan quotes Isaac Aboab, who wrote, " The sukkah is designed to warn us that a man is not to put his trust in the size or strength or beauty of his house, though it is filled with all precious things…"

Kaplan understood the return to living in booths as symbolic of a return to an idealized time in Israel's history, before entering the land, when people lived together in equality and cooperation. In contrast, according to Kaplan, "the heathen civilization of Canaan was founded on the exploitation of the poor by the rich….The same may be said of all modern civilizations. ..Society is based on class distinctions."

In a 1917 sermon, Kaplan wrote about teshuvah (the process of repentance and turning central to the fall holiday season) as the essence of Sukkot: "Return to the simple, the natural, the primitive and the primary source of life." He revisited the theme frequently, arguing in a 1928 Sukkot sermon that it is artificial wants (supplied only at the sacrifice of honesty and justice) and artificial distinctions (based on possessions and parentage) which give rise to the yearning to go back to nature.

Kaplan was not pleased with the reaction of his congregants to his sermons. He often blamed himself for failing to be equal to the task he had set. Like many prophetic types, he struggled with demons of his own: dark moods, periods of intense self doubt and harsh self judgment. His primary life mission was to reconstruct Judaism in order to preserve the Jewish people, yet he questioned how he could continue to do this work when the questions of economic justice were unanswered .

When he taught homiletics at the Jewish Theological Seminary, he encouraged rabbinical students to use sermons on the holidays, as he did, as occasions to preach on issues of justice. Yet, he was well aware of the contradictions of his own life, as well as that of American Jewry. And his journals show us a man who was, at least some of the time, wrestling with depression, bitterness and despair.

Which brings us to the more personal interpretation of the Sukkot holiday and its call for teshuvah. Ultimately, the message of simplicity can also be read in a profoundly individual, spiritual light. Not only must we return to the basics in order to put our values in order as a community and society , we also must return to basics to find meaning, even joy. Sukkot is, after all, z'man simchateinu, the season of our rejoicing. Kaplan was well aware of the spiritual challenge of finding joy, despite difficulties external and internal. Kaplan's own approach was to, once again, return to basics.

If we (re)turn) to some very simple and fundamental blessings in our lives, we often can recapture the gratitude and sense of fullness we have lost in the complexity of life. A passage in Kaplan's journals serves as examples of this kind of "returning"-rejoicing in the simple--providing inspiration for activists today who, like Kaplan, can easily grow discouraged and despairing.

In a relatively rare mood of contentment, after a morning of teaching sermon-writing followed by a brisk two mile walk home, he wrote: "The lunch I found at home was the ideal one for the appetite I had worked up on [my] walk, oatmeal…asparagus tips on toast in an ocean of cream sauce and a cup of coffee with the dried crumbs of chocolate cake…I gave the world three hours of homiletics and the world gave me back a nourishing lunch. I can never cease marveling at the miracle of the exchange of goods and services… It is for this marvel of marvels that I thank God whenever I say grace [after meals], and I say it quite often with cap on or without a cap."

On a physical level, Sukkot can be a time to move outdoors into a humbler, simpler and more basic dwelling, reminding us that we can surely, as the Shakers say, live more simply so that others simply may live. On a psychic and spiritual level, it can also be a time to return to basics: to praise God for the wonder of several hours of productive work, or for the exchange of goods and services that permits the universe to offer us asparagus and toast.