Jewish Connections to Decluttering
Text from my talk to the Adas Israel Sisterhood’s declutterring event
Jewish Connections to Decluttering by R. Penina Alexander
Sunday, September 15th
When I told my husband that I had been asked to speak today on the topic of decluttering, he actually laughed out loud. For in fact, while I believe in the importance of removing clutter and have read Marie Kondo’s The Magical Art of Tidying Up, I am not a tidy person by nature. I struggle with the amount of things that inevitably enter the home from any one of the five of us, plus our au pair, plus our dog. Kids artwork, mail, shoes, sweatshirts, books, papers, so many papers!
However, I fell in love with my neighborhood’s Buy Nothing Group during Covid. It was an opportunity to stay connected to people that I felt like I knew despite never actually meeting them face to face. I also love the philosophy of giving or asking for things locally without explanation; it was just because. Someone I know is only on FB to be on Buy Nothing and not too long ago, committed to giving away 100 items. And now, I am on the admin team for the group.
Groups like this are wonderful but still mostly scratch the surface of comprehensive decluttering, which is something that requires discipline and consistency. Despite my many challenges, I understand that there are spiritual and emotional resonances involved in the practice, especially at this time of year as we look forward toward Rosh Hashanah and a new year with its promise for change and renewal.
Thinking about Jewish connections to decluttering led me to three main ideas: tzimtzum or holy contraction; hiddur mitzvah, beautifying the performance of the commandments and lastly the idea of the shel ma’lah and shel matah, the ideal and the real.
Tzimtzum: When our last au pair Regina arrived from Mexico, she jumped right into organizing spaces. It seems that it was her way of settling in, to hit ‘restart’ on the areas where she will work in order to make them more efficient and frankly, appealing. It was such a blessing to say the least. She straightened up closets, bookshelves, pantry spaces and the junk that piles up in the kids’ rooms.
What was so powerful for me was the clear change in how those spaces made me feel. And I’m not alone in that experience at all. We all felt it. Of course, the challenge is keeping it like that but we all appreciated the change.
Clearing space is also a spiritual practice. In meditation, one focuses on the act of breathing in order to calm the mind and be better equipped to handle the clutter of thoughts that enter, some of which are not helpful for us. The mystics of the Kabbalah understood the creation of the world to be through a ‘clearing out’ of the Divine self to make space for a finite universe. The Divine Creator had to carve out a space within Itself and that retraction is called ‘tzimtzum’.
Once, while participating in a Jewish meditation prayer circle, I experienced a kind of tzimtzum within myself as I breathed and contemplated the words of the Shema that we say at least twice a day, Shema yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad/ Listen, Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One. The breath created a space within my body that I could feel filling up with the Oneness. It was a most powerful experience that could only have happened by intentionally opening myself up and making space within.
Can we reimagine a tzimtzum happening within our physical spaces? Re-enacting the holy act of Creation, we can attempt to retract, to simplify, to clear off every available surface in order to manifest a blank canvas for our own creativity.
As we approach a new Jewish year, how can we rededicate ourselves to clearing out the clutter within and without? What can we then make space for in our homes and in our hearts? More creative ideas, compassion, more love, more understanding, more opportunity for connection? What great things may lie in store if we clear the space for them to arrive? Allowing ourselves to contract the space physically will in turn help us spiritually as well.
Hiddur mitzvah: At this point, it seems like everyone has heard of Marie Kondo. She’s become so synonymous with decluttering that her name has become a verb: For example, I have Marie Kondoed my closet. I listened on and off to Marie Kondo’s Magical Art of Tidying Up on audiobook for years, and when I finally finished the book (hazak hazak!), I started it over again. She brings a beautiful spiritual element to the work of tidying; it’s a larger and more holistic practice than merely putting things away. It’s about recognizing the role of things in our lives and how they make us feel. There are many declutterring methods out there but she made it mainstream.
Kondo’s method involves doing all of it at once, not space by space, but by category of item, and her book, Spark Joy, is a reference guide for how to do it. She recommends getting rid of anything that we do not love, that does not spark joy in a way that we can actually feel. We thank everything else for their service and let them go. I aspire to do this entire process one day, just to see what it feels like to surround myself with only the things I truly love.
In Judaism, we have a concept called Hiddur mitzvah, a way to make the performance of a commandment even more enjoyable, that much more beautiful or meaningful. It is about making an effort to create or acquire beautiful ceremonial objects to enrich the religious observance with aesthetic dimension. I also believe that adding beauty is more than just aesthetics; it’s also about how we feel when we use it. Our own Sisterhood Gift Shop is a wonderful place to find such special and beautiful items.
This concept originates in the Torah, at a time when the People of Israel exulted in God as they crossed the Reed Sea from slavery to freedom. They express the deep emotions of their hearts through the Song of the Sea, a piece of liturgy we sing every day, also knows as Az Yashir. They sang:
עׇזִּ֤י וְזִמְרָת֙ יָ֔הּ וַֽיְהִי־לִ֖י לִֽישׁוּעָ֑ה זֶ֤ה אֵלִי֙ וְאַנְוֵ֔הוּ אֱלֹהֵ֥י אָבִ֖י וַאֲרֹמְמֶֽנְהוּ׃
יהוה is my strength and might;
God is my deliverance.
This is my God who I will glorify
In a Midrash, a rabbinic teaching about “zeh eli v’anvehu; I will glorify God”, Rabbi Ishmael wonders about how to do this. The phrase is commonly translated as I will glorify God but it could also mean I will beautify God.
Here’s the original text:
מכילתא דרבי ישמעאל, מַסֶּכְתָּא דְשִׁירָה ג׳:י״א
רַבִּי יִשְׁמָעֵאל אוֹמֵר: וְכִי אֶפְשָׁר לְבָשָׂר וָדָם לְהַנָּווֹת לְקוֹנוֹ? אֶלָּא אֲנַוֶּה לוֹ בְּמִצְוֹת - אֶעֱשֶׂה לְפָנָיו לוּלָב נָאֶה סֻכָּה נָאֶה צִיצִית נָאֶה תְּפִלָּה נָאָה.
Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shirah 3:11
R. Ishmael says: Is it actually possible for a human to beautify their Creator?
Rather, it means “I will beautify God through mitzvot” - I will prepare before God a beautiful lulav, a beautiful sukkah, beautiful tzitzit, and beautiful tefillah. From this we get the concept of hiddur mitzvah.
Let me ask you: Can you think of ritual items that you may have that you love using? What makes them special? How do you feel when you use them? Do they spark joy or in our context: spark hiddur?
When decluttering becomes more about surrounding yourself with the items that bring you joy and the ritual items that enhance Jewish practice, this is sparking hiddur. The commandments are certainly fulfilled by simple objects and many people find that meaningful as well. But consider the specially embroidered tallit, the masterfully constructed hanukkiah, the candlesticks handed down over time, using nice or meaningful decor for the sukkah.
Here’s an example from my life of a secular item that sparks hiddur: Ariel and I bought a blown glass pumpkin created by a visiting artist at Ramah Darom one Pesach. When we held the pumpkin with its swirling greens and blues, we both felt the spark inside. We knew that this item was special and we created a space for it in his room. From time to time, we take it down and hold it between us and it certainly sparks hiddur. We have a special photos in frames, artwork and other items passed down from family. I love seeing these items for their beauty and for their sentimental value and they always spark hiddur for me. I am sure we can all see in our minds a few items that do the same for us.
When certain items are imbued with extra importance, it makes sense to elevate their use and say goodbye to any others that might not fill your heart the same way.
Ma’ala and ma’ata:
Some of us are innately wired to keep things tidy and uncluttered and some of us are just…not. I remember telling a friend that I was going to be attempting a Marie Kondo style clean out and she said, wow, isn’t that going to be really hard for you? And the answer is ABSOLUTELY! But it doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth the effort. I was able to accomplish decluttering my clothes because as Kondo says, the clothes are what’s closest to us so we should start there. However, the things that are much more difficult for me are the things that require constant vigilance: the top of the dresser, the piles on the desk, the dishes in the sink. The struggle for a tidy home feels endless.
While I certainly believe that decluttering is valuable and can be very satisfying, it is important not to judge ourselves harshly if we cannot measure up to the standards of others. We need to be kind to ourselves and give ourselves grace when we fall short. Our High Holy Day liturgy certainly recognizes this when we list the many ways we have missed the mark during the Al Chet. We knock our chests and admit our shortcomings but we keep working toward making ourselves and our communities better.
A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook: I discovered the “there are no rules” concept to deal with my clean laundry. One of my ADHD things is that I cannot manage to put away clean laundry. There was a corner of my room with a pile of clean laundry…forever. I just wore things out of that pile and then put them in the laundry hamper, washed them, and then put them back in the clean laundry pile that I was planning on folding/hanging eventually. Forever. I cannot ever seem to make myself consistently put away the clean laundry. And it was always sitting there staring at me and mocking me. I mean, how hard is it to fold and hang up clothes? And then one day, someone somewhere was posting about how they deal with some of their mess. And how they have three laundry hampers: one for clean clothes, one for dirty and one for clothes they aren’t sure about and don’t have time to figure out. And that was it. I don’t need the not sure hamper; but I bought a big double hamper for all the clean clothes. So now I have a laundry hamper for dirty clothes and a double laundry hamper for clean clothes and no more pile of clean laundry in my room. Because you know what? There are no rules!
The Talmud in tractate Taanit references Yerushalayim shel maalah and Yerushalayim shel maatah, the Jerusalem of the heavenly realm and the one here on earth. Sometimes, it feels as though the rules of decluttering belong in the realm of shel ma’alah, from heaven. It’s the realm where the best intentions, the put-together, the “in theory” exists. But, we all live in shel ma’atah, the earthly realm, where reality intersects with the ideal. Even Marie Kondo had to admit that she lives in the shel matah rather than the shel ma’alah now that she has three children!
Practicing Judaism is a way of life, an orientation of seeing the world as an opportunity to make holiness out of the mundane. It’s a way, as the mystics described, to gather the broken shards of the holy vessels that could not contain God’s wholeness and to try to repair the brokenness in our world. We strive to create wholeness, shalem, and peace, shalom, in our homes as well. We build community through Buy Nothing Groups, we give freely to those we know or those we don’t, we clear space, make tzimtzum, we look for ways to beautify our practices through hiddur mitzvah while making sure to remain firmly grounded in our present realities.
We are a work in progress, always growing and becoming, on our own and in community. As one of my Peloton teachers wisely said: Change is inevitable but transformation takes work! We may find these processes to be overwhelming but we need to find the courage to take the first step.
I’ll finish with the words of poet Mary Oliver from her poem: Storage.
When I moved from one house to another
there were many things I had no room
for. What does one do? I rented a storage
space. And filled it. Years passed.
Occasionally I went there and looked in,
but nothing happened, not a single
twinge of the heart.
As I grew older the things I cared
about grew fewer, but were more
important. So one day I undid the lock
and called the trash man. He took
Everything.
I felt like the little donkey when
his burden is finally lifted. Things!
Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful
fire! More room in your heart for love,
for the trees! For the birds who own
nothing—the reason they can fly.