Sukkot holiday inspires social action

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/10/2024 (350 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You probably have noticed one or two of them already. They are small three or four-walled structures with partially covered foliage roofs that may have popped up in the yards of some of your Jewish neighbours this past week. The structures, called sukkahs, are erected each fall to celebrate the eight day harvest festival of Sukkot.

Sukkot, also known as the Feast of the Tabernacles, began this year at sundown on Oct 16, four days after the end of the fast day of Yom Kippur. It is one of the three festivals on which the Jewish people in ancient times made pilgrimages to the holy Temple in Jerusalem.

The sukkah serves as a history lesson. Deliberately impermanent, it is a reminder of the temporary structures in which the Jewish people sheltered as they wandered the Sinai desert for forty years following their exodus from Egypt. It is, as well, a reminder of the many times in the ensuing centuries when Jews were exiled from host countries and forced to find new shelters and new homes.

Finally, the sukkah also represents the temporary huts that Jewish farmers erected near their fields in ancient times during the harvest season.

During the week of Sukkot, observant Jews take all their meals in the sukkah, and weather permitting, sleep in it too. It is also customary to invite guests into the sukkah each day to share in a meal.

While there are special Sukkot services held in synagogues, much of the ritual associated with the holiday takes place inside the walls of the sukkah. That ritual includes the recitation of special blessings and prayers, accompanied by the shaking of a lulav—a palm frond bundled with myrtle and willow twigs—and of a pleasant smelling citron fruit known as an etrog.

Interpretations abound about what the lulav and etrog represent and why they are held together and waved in all directions. One interpretation suggests that the lulav represents the human spine and the etrog symbolizes the human heart, and the waving in all directions symbolizes God’s ubiquity and power.

The celebration of Sukkot is rooted in tradition, but, like all Jewish festivals, it can serve as a valuable segue into important conversations and actions regarding contemporary social justice issues such as homelessness, food insecurity and climate change.

Sukkot has many themes, explains Sherry Wolfe Elazar, the Jewish Learning Coordinator at Winnipeg’s Reform Temple Shalom, and one of them is gratitude.

“One of the reasons we build sukkahs is obviously to remember the sukkahs in the desert,” Wolfe Elazar says, “but more importantly, in more modern times we are supposed to sit in our sukkahs and be grateful for the homes that we live in and the food that we have. We are supposed to feel a little bit uncomfortable, maybe a little cold, or maybe a little wet. “

“Sukkot,” she continues, “is a time to really think about the unhoused and what we can do to help them. And one of those things is to share the food that we grow or bought with people in our community who need support.”

That is precisely what Temple Shalom congregants did in anticipation and celebration of the holiday. Earlier in the season, they harvested the Indigenous Three Sister Vegetables—beans, corn and squash—from the Healing Heart Garden that they planted in front of the synagogue a year ago. The creation of the garden was the congregation’s way of expressing its commitment to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action.

After collecting the vegetables, including more than one hundred pounds of squash, the congregation donated them to the local non-profit, the Leftovers Foundation. They also donated the four sacred medicinal plants that they grow in the garden to Indigenous healers.

In many other congregations and communities across North America, Sukkot celebrations and rituals this week will be accompanied by similar actions. These will include winter clothing drives, hands-on-volunteering at soup kitchens, and the lending of support to initiatives dedicated to helping the unhoused find shelters that are more permanent and more durable than the sukkahs that are built every fall.

swchisvin@gmail.com

The Free Press is committed to covering faith in Manitoba. If you appreciate that coverage, help us do more! Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow us to deepen our reporting about faith in the province. Thanks! BECOME A FAITH JOURNALISM SUPPORTER