Limitation Drives Innovation: A Sukkot Message

Give children everything, and you give them nothing. 

In a world where endless information and the world’s leading experts on a myriad of topics are literally a quick click away, it is easy to assume that unbounded learning environments are critical to both creativity and academic rigor. 

In fact, the exact opposite is true. As Orson Welles said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” It is limitation—not openness—that forces the rigorous, collaborative thinking that leads to groundbreaking innovation. 

Consider a first grade engineering challenge in which students are asked to create a free-standing structure sturdy enough to hold an egg. Moderately challenging, maybe. Now consider the same challenge with the following constraints: first graders have to work in groups of four; they can only use a roll of tape, ten straws, five pieces of string, and three paper clips; the structure has to be at least seven cm tall; and, they have only twelve minutes to complete the task. I saw this design challenge happen in one of our classrooms last week, and the mental sweat was palpable. 

The lead educator at the Children’s Creativity Museum in San Francisco talks about the notion of “creative constraints.” In the museum’s Maker Space, students select design challenges—an invention to freeze time, a way to save their school after it’s flooded in Jell-O, a cage for the moon—and they are given a “mystery challenge box” with a handful of materials. They must solve the design challenge using only those materials. According to research out of the dSchool at Stanford, constraints are essential for sophisticated design thinking; they push students to think about the purpose of the invention and the possibilities for innovation. At the Children’s Creativity Museum this comes to pass: young engineers’ mystery box solutions are elegant, innovative and sophisticated. 

Similarly, Sukkot’s creative constraints yield much of the holiday’s meaning.  Building a sukkah is not an open, boundless challenge. Quite the contrary: in our sukkah, we must be able to see the stars and feel the rain and our sukkah must receive more shade than sun. A sukkah must be made to withstand an ordinary wind but it cannot rest against an existing wall. We move from our permanent homes—equipped, for many of us, with every modern convenience imaginable—into the sukkah, a transient, primal dwelling. There we eat our meals, reconnect with friends and family, and study Torah. There, we return to the sense of the infinite possibility. Stripped of so much that we have convinced ourselves defines us, we imagine what we truly could be. 

In the classroom, limitations lead to rigorous, innovative thinking. In the sukkah, too, limitations force us out of our comfort zones, and we find ourselves in a celebratory, aspirational, sacred space where we are more free to recognize our core values. The “limitations” of sukkah dwelling allow us the space to ask the key questions Rabbi Jonathan Sacks identifies for the high holidays: “Did we use [time] to serve a purpose or did we merely exist? Did we use it for ourselves or did we share time with others? Did we bring blessing into a life other than our own?” In other words, are we living consciously? Are we living with purpose?

This year, as I walk the halls of our school, I hope to see many students blessed with the limitations that propel their intellectual, ethical, and spiritual growth. And may we all be blessed with a Sukkot full of the meaning and purpose that constraints can bring. 

Chag Samaech!