(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Song of Zion: Sukkot Reflection [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-10-21 Last night the holiday of Sukkot began. Sukkot lasts seven days in Israel and eight days elsewhere. Sukkot is a kind of harvest holiday. It is marked by creating a temporary shelter (sukkah) with various specifications, like a roof of organic material like branches (s’chacthat) which should mostly keep you sheltered from the sun. In communities of practicing Jews there lots of households with sukkahs, and people will even “sukkah hop” visiting various community members’ sukkahs. It is traditional to sleep and eat in the sukkah. It’s largely a fun community holiday, unless you are eating a meal in the rain (said from experience). And then there’s the lulav and etrog (Four Species) which we ritually shake in the sukkah. My favorite part is the pleasantly pungent, lemon-like scent of the etrog fruit. Getting the most beautiful etrog is a big deal in some communities, and the best can fetch high prices. While part of me finds the familiar visuals of the etrog quest above charming, I’ve realized this year after reading this article by Rishe Groner that I’ve internalized the practice, and even Sukkot itself as deeply male. My earliest days of attending sukkahs was watching the men do- the men talking about their etrogs, and the men saying the prayers, and so on. I have stories from Sukkos that I tell over and over each year, starting from the year a man waved his hands in front of my seven-year-old body and told me no women are allowed on the other side of the street during the all-night dancing of Simchas Beis Hashoeva, to last year when I had to sneak through the market for a Lulav and Esrog1 in a black hoodie so I wouldn’t be spotted as a woman in a men’s only space. And now I realize that my feelings for Sukkot are complicated. So I’ve spent some time reading and sorting through that this year. And it’s not that I’m mad, I still have much love for the religious community like the woman in the article, it’s just I realize I’ve missed out on something that I don’t think I should have. Like she says: Every year it’s another journey, another layer of delving into the life I was raised with, the agony and the ecstasy of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and the beauty of the songs, the dances, the passion and the joy. And also – the exclusion, the segregation, the search for my place within all of it, and now, outside of it. Ruchama Feuerman gives some insight into what building that space for women can look like on one’s own terms. She reflects on her attempt to fit in with the surrounding orthodox community as a single woman and notes feeling especially left out during Sukkot. Rachama was expected to join nuclear families for their sukkah events, but she wanted her own sukkah, her own place to celebrate with her own decorations. So even though it simply wasn’t done, she got up the nerve to build her own sukkah, and then she got to decorating it: When I moved to Brooklyn and saw no women wearing tichels – wigs and hats had become the fashion – I’d stopped this practice but couldn’t bring myself to throw out the scarves. Then it struck me: I’d take those reject scarves and drape them throughout my sukkah. If I couldn’t wear them, at least the sukkah would. And they did look gorgeous against the panels. My funky tichel sukkah became the hit of the block, no easy feat in a street of at least 20 festival booths. The kids, Hasidic, Yeshivish, Jewish, [gentile]*, all stopped in, ate my cookies, and said how great it was. The best compliment came from a Hasidic boy who looked around, wide-eyed, and spread out his arms: “It’s like a rocket ship!” The neighborhood women stuck their heads inside, too. I saw their faces. Not disapproving as I’d feared, just … struck. Then thoughtful. *I have replaced the bad JWI (Jewish Women Internation), created a guide, “Rethinking Sukkot: Women, Relationships and Jewish Texts”. It’s full of conversation starters, and new ways to think about older texts while centering women’s experiances. One delightful sukkah custom is to invite special guests [ushpizin, an Aramaic word for guests] to join us, at least in our imaginations. Traditional ushpizin were illustrious men from our tradition (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and King David) but now the list has expanded to include heroines from the Bible such as Sarah, Miriam, Hannah, Deborah, and Queen Esther. Some families encourage their own flesh-and-blood dinner guests to come prepared to introduce and share a personal ushpiz, especially what it is aboutthem that is so inspiring. I’ve also run into several articles tying Sukkot to disaster survival and recovery in Katrina. We were fortunate to make it through the worst of Milton’s tornado outbreak without even losing power. But some of my husband’s students did not. Some are still without power, and one is helping his parents salvage what they can of their house. From Gail Chalew at The Forward: everyone in New Orleans — rich and poor, black and white, Jew and non-Jew — now understands the experience of the wandering Jews thousands of years ago. For everyone has had to live in sukkahs of a sort, temporary homes stripped of familiar possessions. for thousands along the Gulf Coast, the Sukkot experience has lasted not eight days but longer than two years. It has grown very old. Now it is time for the rest of the country to learn another lesson of Sukkot: that it is a God-given right to live in decent housing, and that we who enjoy that right have the responsibility to ensure that everyone else can, as well. Living in a sukkah reminds us not only that many live in vulnerable and flimsy dwellings, but also that we are commanded to correct that inequity through tzedakah. As we transition to the new year, I am thinking particularly about victims of the current storms, and it is my hope that anyone without safe shelter will realize their “God-given right to live in decent housing” quickly, rather than years. I know a presidential candidate who would like to make that happen. So folks, how’s your Sukkot so far? Who would your ushpizin be? Hope your new year is off to a good start! 1) Esrog is an alternative spelling and pronunciation for Etrog. 2) The brackets are there because I have replaced “the G-word” for non-Jews with gentile. It was clear that the author was not using it as a slur, neverthless, I prefer to be conservative on the matter. labeled etrog Welcome to A Song of Zion / Dvar Torah, our weekly check-in and virtual minyan for Jews on Daily Kos. We are a community and study series named for our heritage and for the Dvar Torah tradition. This is an open thread, and we treat it as a safe space for Jewish folks here. Non-Jews are welcome but we ask that they listen more than speak. No squabbling, please: if you want to fight, please step outside. Newcomers and visitors can get their bearings from our host-group’s profile/ statement HERE and from recent & past posts (approx. date order). To add our series’ posts to your activity stream, click on DvarTorah in the tag-list at the foot of any of our diaries, and you’ll get our dk tag-page where you can click on the FOLLOW button. 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