Songs of Sukkot

The Sukkah is up! Thursday evening Gill and I assemble the sukkah, and on Friday morning I get it decorated. Mysteriously, the stuffed penguin and assorted cows have disappeared, but the plastic mangos are still there (whew!). The plastic alligator and the centipede take their traditional place at the entrance, and the paper chains (made by the twins when they were in nursery school) are still usable. Lest anyone think that there is some religious significance to this flurry of kitsch, let me assure you that is purely family whimsy. The decorations tend to include anything we've got on hand, but the big black furry blob on the table is essential; it just isn't Sukkot until Nadine officially visits the sukkah. Like a queen, she enters with great deliberation and dignity, carefully sniffing everything and finally meowing to show her approval.

Sukkot is one of the festivals that I never understood while growing up in Seattle. This time of year would inevitably be cold and rainy, and the thought of sitting, eating, or sleeping in a flimsy temporary booth thatched with schach (palm fronds) was ludicrous. But here, it all makes sense. This is where the festival was born; this is the land, the climate, and the harvest cycle that fits the festival. It has become one of my favorite holidays.

Sukkot has wide appeal because while it is a major religious holiday, it is also a harvest festival. The latter theme appeals to everyone, especially the kibbutz culture. For my part, I love seeing these little booths spring up all over the neighborhood, in small front yards, on balconies, or in parking lots next to houses. Each one is decorated differently, and each one becomes the focal point for family gatherings during the week-long festival.

Services Friday night are short and sweet. We all crowd into the beit knesset's sukkah afterwards for kiddush. The evening has cooled down pleasantly, but the broken AC inside the beit knesset made the room stifling. I walk back, climbing up and over the hills towards our neighborhood, Givat Ram. There are fireworks in the villages across the road; it is the end of Ramadan, and they are celebrating. Blogger Lisa Goldman of On the Face highlights this coexistence of two cultures in this exchange when she ran into a Muslim friend in a Tel Aviv coffee shop on Yom Kippur:

"Ramadan Kareem," I said, while directing a tongue-in-cheek glance at his cappuccino. "I see you're not fasting this year."

"Coffee and cigarettes don't count," he answered in a mock-ingenuous tone. "Oh, and g'mar hatima tova. Are you fasting?"

"Absolutely," I answered. "Between meals."

(Muslims are supposed to fast during daylight hours during the month of Ramadan; Jews are supposed to fast from sundown to sundown on Yom Kippur. Clearly, there are plenty of both who don't!)

But that's the fun of Sukkot; even the completely non-observant can participate in some way. One Sukkot activity is shaking the lulav and etrog. The lulav is a bundle of three of the four species mentioned in the Torah (date palm, myrtle, and willow). The fourth specie is the etrog itself (citron—sort of like a lemon). Tons of meaning and symbolism to these items, which I won't get into here... Technically, you are supposed to grasp the lulav and etrog together, say the right blessing, and shake in the six directions (east, south, west, north, up, down) in a very specific way. But in practice, the ritual of shaking the lulav and etrog has become, well, individualistic, as seen in this excellent video.

The family comes over on Shabbat. We've made, as usual, too much food, and everyone shows up with even more, so I won't be cooking for a while. Nadine does her disappearing act, emerging only when everyone has departed. Guests make her cranky, but we coax her back into a good mood with leftover brie and smoked salmon.

Saturday night, Gill's company throws a bash at Yehi'am, the site of a Crusader fortress. Clever renovation in and around the ruins have turned it into a popular tourist attraction and banquet venue. (Gill and I were married there; in fact, next Friday, 13 October, is our 7th anniversary!) After all the speeches, we move outside for dinner, and everyone realizes that yes, summer is over! After dinner, we go back into the main hall for a delightful performance by Yoram Taharlev, a talented song-writer responsible for many beloved songs. (Think Zahava Ben singing "Al kafo yavi"...) Yoram tells stories, jokes, and lets us in on what he was really thinking when he wrote some of the songs. The songs themselves are performed by a young woman, and the whole thing is one of those sing-alongs that is so quintessentially Israeli. Since a good chunk of the employees at Gill's company are Arab, I wonder what they make of all this. We are both yawning and exhausted from an already full day, so we slip out early.

It is the end of an almost a perfect day. Even our national team (soccer) pulls a draw with Russia, to our great surprise. Nadine waits for us at home, slightly groggy from a cheese-induced stupor.

Hag s'meach.