Hey all! So to add to my ever increasing schedule, my husband and I officially became Jewish Lay Leaders here at Fort Rucker. Check out the article that I wrote (yet to be edited by the head chaplain so suggestions welcome) about Sukkot. It's going to be printed in the Army Flier newspaper!
SEASON OF OUR REJOICING
Believe it or not, the month long sequence of Jewish High
Holidays is almost upon us! You may have heard of the Jewish New Year (Rosh
Hashanah) and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), but have you ever heard of
Sukkot (pronounced Sue-coat)? Explaining the holiday of Sukkot makes Judaism
sound like the craziest religion in the world. Jews gather together and build sukkahs
(little huts) outside their homes, synagogues, and even restaurants. These sukkahs
have a roof made of natural materials through which one can see the stars,
making them leaky, and at a time when much of the Northern hemisphere is
beginning to become bitterly cold, Jews will eat and some will even live in
these temporary shelters. During the seven-day holiday of Sukkot, people will also
see Jews shaking a lulav (branches from a palm tree, a willow tree, and a
myrtle tree) and etrog (essentially an oversized lemon with a nub on one end)
up and down and in each of the cardinal directions.
Crazy, right? Yet this holiday is described in Leviticus in
the Torah. It is a tradition that historically symbolizes the 40 year period when
the Jews wandered in the desert and is agriculturally significant as the
harvest festival. The holiday of Sukkot is one of the Shalosh Regalim – the
Three Pilgrimage Festivals (also including Passover and Shavuot) where Jews
would come from all over the biblical lands to the Temple in Jerusalem in order
to make offerings to the temple in honor of these holidays. The sukkahs are
like those used by farmers who needed to live in their fields while harvesting
their crops, and this modest shelter teaches humility as well as hospitality as
Jews invite guests and come together for meals and Jewish learning. The lulav
and etrog are shaken in every direction as a reminder that G-d is all around us,
and they are also carried in a procession around the Torah during religious
services, mimicking a similar procession in Temple times.
Reality Check. So what does all that significance and
history mean? Here is a story. I was eighteen and living in Jerusalem, Israel
for one year. We had just returned from 4 days of desert survival training in
the Negev Desert where my group would awaken each morning, pray and shake our
lulavs, surrounded by a land untouched by modern society or conveniences. It
felt like we had been brought through time into biblical Israel and were
celebrating with others of our faith from a time long past. Now we were back in
today’s world and I was with a group of my friends walking down the very
popular touristy street called Ben Yehudah. At that time there was a kosher
Burger King on that street, and because it was Sukkot, the Burger King had
built a sukkah outside their restaurant so that observant Jews could do the
mitzvah (commandment) of sitting and eating in a sukkah. It was such a strange
meeting of old and new. I still had that overwhelming sense of connection to the
Jewish past from our week in the desert, and now I was observing these ancient
commandments and traditions while simultaneously being a twenty-first century
teenager looking for some fast food. It made me feel a sense of continuity
between the Torah and myself, and from the history of the Jewish people all the
way to the present. It made the holiday of Sukkot relevant in a way I had never
before experienced. It is also absolutely amazing to have lived in a place
where it was that easy and simple to follow the commandment to sit and eat in a
sukkah. I could go anywhere and eat anything, and yet my Jewish observance was
provided for. That sense of history, of connection, and of being normal is one
of the things that made my time in Israel so special to me.
That experience on Ben Yehudah really touched me and has
made sukkot, also know as the Season of our Rejoicing (and who doesn’t love having
that in their lives?), one of my favorite holidays. This year, at Fort Rucker,
we are going to build a sukkah and I invite each and every one of you to come
and sit and eat in our sukkah. We will be having a dessert potluck on Sunday
August 30 at 7:00. Kids welcome and they can even help us to decorate our
sukkah with paper chains and drawings! You can even bring your neighbors!
Please contact me, Jenn Kalik, at (203) 314-4196 if you are even thinking about
coming (no R.S.V.P. necessary but we need some idea of numbers) or want to be a
part of a Jewish community here at Fort Rucker. I have no idea how many of you
this will reach, but if any of you are like me, and missing that Jewish
something in your life down here in the Bible Belt, I truly hope you will come
and celebrate this amazing holiday with us and help us to create a Jewish
community here at Fort Rucker.
Helpful Holiday Dates:
Rosh Hashanah: Sunset
of September 16 through nightfall of September 18
Fast
of Gedaliah: September 19
Yom
Kippur: Sunset of September 25 through nightfall of September 26
Sukkot:
Sunset of September 30 through sunset of October 7
Shmini
Atzeret: Sunset of October 7 through
nightfall of October 8
Simchat
Torah: Nightfall of October 8 through nightfall of October 9
