SHABBAT SUKKOT 5783 – CHESHIRE
I miss Israel more during Sukkot… especially on Lotan, so let me wax nostalgic and paint a picture of what Sukkot looks like at home for me. Immediately after the shofar is blown and we’ve sung “l’shana ha-ba’ah byerushalayim” after Neilah, several tall people come forward with the first of dozens of interlocking metal poles (welded by kibbutz members) and within a few short minutes they have erected the first square of what will be a Sukkah that can seat 200. The ‘striking of the first tent peg’, which is what the old term is for beginning to build a Sukkah, happens even before the majority head into the Dining Room for the meal that begins the day after Yom Kippur. Over the next three days (or less if there is Shabbat in between) a group of volunteers, either members or hired workers, will complete the reconstruction of the frame. Then the Landscaping Branch of Kibbutz usually lends both workers and a tractor, first to wrap the outer walls with canvas and then to bring flatbeds full of semi fresh palm fronds from the trees we have just finished harvesting. Lotan has thousands of date trees and they get pruned every year, but bringing them into the kibbutz, right next to the Dining Room, is no small logistic feat. Once they’re dumped on the nearest lawn or stretch of sand, they have to be dragged into the Sukkah and hauled up to the roof where they are tied down in strategic places. It’s an enormous undertaking really, and that’s actually only the beginning!
Once the walls are up and the shade has been mostly completed, the creative forces come on scene: murals of handprints of children in years past are hung, as well as other mostly fabric decorations, most made on Lotan. Every year we add to the decorations because it’s fun to make paper chains and cut out “Chinese lanterns” that get suspended overhead until the wind or wayward hands take them out. When was the last time you colored just for the fun of it? This is “The Holiday” in Hebrew, and we are commanded to be happy on it!! So the littlest kids come and their parents help them make something to beautify our temporary home. And if you think we’re finished, you have another thing coming!
Once the decorations are up, usually the day before the holiday begins, more volunteers come to reinforce the kitchen workforce to move all the table and chairs from the Dining Room outside into the Sukkah, about the same distance as at TBD, but we have a ramp. Lunch is served in the Dining Room but eaten either sitting on the floor or outside on a bench because we wait to sit in the Sukkah until that evening. Our dedicated kitchen workers have to wash all the meat dishes from lunch in order for the tables to be set for dinner so it’s an extra long day for them, but it’s worth it.
Finally, it’s 6:00 pm and Sukkot services begin, either in the open air of the Sukkah or inside the Moadon next to it IF IT’S TOO HOT, and throughout the service people wander up and take seats at the set tables or stand and sing along with the parts they know. Fast forward to after the meal – there is ALWAYS a sing-along with the many guests that come for the holiday, because there is NO SCHOOL for the entirety of Sukkot in Israel! That includes everyone except the Arabic speaking public schools as far as I know.
So, I miss Lotan and the Sukkah and the singing and the community. But, as we will read this Shabbat here at TBD, we are now closing the scroll on the story that was and returning, in a different way than on Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur, to B’reisheet, to the beginning of. That’s deliberate. What it will begin we must wait to discover, beginning with our Simchat Torah celebration a week from tonight with the Ruach Players!
