Sukkot

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome recently banned bottled water from all city offices and functions (Yishar Koa’ch!). A recent documentary film and book, Thirst, by Deborah Kaufman (founder of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival) and Alan Snitow asks whether water is a public resource or a commodity to be bought and sold for profit. From political debates over pollution, to controversies over public control vs. privatization, to the very personal dilemmas of whether you should carry bottled water, there is truly “water, water, everywhere.”

How should the Jewish community respond to these global and local water crises?

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The Torah comes to its annual conclusion with V'zot Habracha, which is the only Parsha in the Torah not read specifically on Shabbes. Rather, V'zot Habracha is read on Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, when people in the shul are called up to the Torah for an aliyah -- even young children, even years before their respective b'nai mitzvot. I really love the creative ideas congregations come up with the differentiate the different aliyot. I, do remember the congregation I visited last year declaring one for "Cubs fans!" and one for "Sox fans!". Poor soxers. I think three people went to the bimah. But, I digress...

Shall we dance?

I heard two girls talking on the train last year and one of them said to the other, "I love Simchat Torah because it reminds me of the last week of school. It's like, 'Awesome, we're finished, let's go crazy', you know?" But, personally, I never thought of it that way. I always felt it was more about celebrating a continuity than it was celebrating an end. For me, Simchat Torah represents and celebrates the clean slate feeling we get from knowing the whole Torah is turned to begin again, and we face the chance to reread it all in a new way. A new way, with our life experiences behind us that we have learned from, that have (shehehiyanu) brought us to this moment, this era, this portion. The words of the Torah don't change, but we certainly do. Learning, challenging ourselves and growing, each year, we see the Torah in a new way. Things that caught our ears in 5767 and absorbed into us and we grew from, maybe don't stand out as much in 5768. In this new year, we hear new parts, we understand words-- perhaps even words we've heard again and again, year after year-- in a brand-new way. Simchat Torah reminds us, quite simply, that the Torah is a constant, we are always changing, and fret not, as we change, so do our interpretations, and, cycle of cycles, as we shift, we should try to remind ourselves that even in times of great confusion, the things that perk up our ears and comfort us this time, even where perhaps they had not before, those things are in there.

And, maybe there's another thought. Maybe we are only open to hearing those "Ping! What did I just read? How perfect this is for my life right now!" moments when we free ourselves and not clutch onto our past interpretations, our past selves, our pasts at all. Perhaps we are only open to those moments when we know that everything, good and bad, positive and negative, foolish and wise, everything we have done in our lives up until right now is to be accepted, for it shapes who we are and all that we have become. Today. Right now. And, maybe when we accept, as opposed to regret, we allow those moments of new understanding, or new shoots of green growth to enter our minds. Perhaps even, regretting and fretting are the things which close our ears and hearts and minds to all the little divine threads blowing around in the world.

K'shem sh'haTorah niglelet mimakom l'makom b'simcha uveshalom, kayn eglol mimakom l'makom berachamim uve'ratzon.

Just as the Torah is rolled from end to beginning amid joy and peace, so too may we go from place to place surrounded by compassion and good will.

(And, so nobody goes home empty-handed, here's an interesting read-- Geshem: Verses for our Mothers, highlighting the matriarchs of our Torah and their relationships to water, and here is a piece chocked-full of ideas, Women's Tefillah and Torah Reading for Simchat Torah.)

The other day, I stopped into a Judaica shop for a particular book and, okay, okay, to peek at the Sukkot tzotch, and after seeing plastic pumpkins, strings of plastic apples, a string of plastic light-up gourds (okay, those were kind of cool, I must admit), I started feeling unnerved by these piles and piles of plastic, glittery, cartooney, printed and manufactured options available for Sukkot. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something felt weird about it to me. Don't get my wrong. I think Sukkot is fan-fucking-tabulous and love a done-up sukkah just as much as the next yiddishe maideleh . But, something was so iddly about it all to me all of a sudden.

Blammo!: More nature than you can shake a stick, er, lulav at.

I kept asking myself what my stupid deal was and knew it had something to do with the fake stuff. I kept asking myself why manufactured things in a sukkah would be that big a deal and, anyway, finally, after seeing piles of sparkly, printed, plastic, factory-made, mass-produced sukkah decorations and fiberglass sukkah-in-a-box kits and sturdy PVC poles out of the corner of my eye as I looked for that book on a nearby shelf, I came to realize what my deal was. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the decorations, by any means, but it was more about what the decorations were not. (Bear with me here for a sec. I need to sort of get to my point in a roundabout way. As I'm, you know, often doing. Ahem.)

We blow our fuses because our computers crash, our cars bump into each other, or we feel sometimes ashamed in our plainness when a friend or neighbor celebrates great material fortunes. Right? Right. But, in a Sukkah, we are all humbled and leveled to sameness. We are at the mercy of the temperature, the weather and forced to rely on more dependable, yet less concrete, things-- conversation, connection, laughter, sharing a meal. (All the things we probably thought about focusing more on during the Days of Awe.) The Sukkah reminds up that our lives aren't in our nice homes and the nice things in our nice homes, but in our doing, our living, our actions.

Nature: C'mon feel the mojo.

It is, let us not forget, a harvest festival, and try as we might with agri-chemi-pharma-whatever, the earth and seasons always win. The more we ignore and try to fight the seasons and the earth, could it be the more and more disconnect we experience from that individual light that makes us human..? Just like with a manufactured, plastic sukkah, perhaps....? (Don't get me wrong, I have had the pleasure of being in some stunning sukkot, plastic and otherwise, I'm just saying there is something to said for seeing the natural elements going on in a sukkah to really feel the earth mother mojo around you.)

Perhaps on the outside looking in, we have every reason to be happy in this country. We have choices, so many choices, every single day, and even many poor families are still better off than most inhabitants of third world countries. We seem to have happiness flowing from everywhere, don't we? So then why are we medicated to the hilt, medicating our kids, stuffing our foods with chemicals, making everything bigger, better, faster, blowing through money faster than we can make it, opting for "convenience" over "responsible" or "healthy", addicted to each other, television, computers (oy, guilty), the BlackBerry (again), multi-tasking (oy), drugs, shopping, debt, stuffing our homes with everything we can reach and, why, above all else, are we addicted to being so busy?

Because sometimes all of that crap is easier than sitting and listening to ourselves and just being. Rosh HaShanah suggests this to us and makes us turn the soils to uncover honest and human things we perhaps had forgotten in our emotional junk piles. Yom Kippur, with themes of mortality, drives this home even more so-- is it better to die having lived a righteous life filled with stunning moments?... Or... is it better to die with piles of debt and junk and "wouldda couldda shouldda" lists around us that we never looked up from? That's a no-brainer! Sukkot is abundance. But not hollow "stuff", just simple abundance of feeling, connectedness to the planet and people, pausing to dig the moments... Sukkot's celebrating isn't about bigger, better, faster, more! It is about the more... um, ethereal definition of "abundance" not the material one. And, that's key, I think.

So, in the Judaica shop, I felt a distinct need to make a conscious decision to keep Sukkot natural. It's a time for autumn fruits and vegetables to taste their best and nourish us the most. It's a time to be humble before nature, life synchronicity and the world and make a big, empowered, conscious leap... down. Not down as in lesser, but down as in slower, as in still, as in calmer. (Perhaps that is what we mean when we say "Calm down!"...?) Why buy sukkah decorations when you can make them? Why buy a sukkah when you can make that, too? It's focusing, it's empowering, it's natural. It's even, dare I say, the natural, thriving world we have lived in for thousands of years begging us to return to it, even if for just a week.

May security be found in the ethereal and may more fragility be realized in the material.

Chag Sameach, my dears.

It's almost Sukkot, gang. Are you so excited? Personally, despite living in an apartment building with a balcony I share with my neighbor that would be impossible to build a Sukkah on, I'm a fan. It's a lovely reminder of the fragility of our lives, at the mercy of elements, and, probably my favorite theme is the reminder that our "homes" aren't in the buildings we construct, or in the things we buy, but in ourselves and the people we surround ourselves with. (Among other things. I mean, hello, I could sit and write explaining the particulars of Sukkot for days, but that's not what we're here to dig up in this post. Although, this is a nice explanation of some particulars here.)

Anyway. SukkahSoul is, apparently, all the rage this year. I have to admit, that's pretty nice-looking Sukkah. (Maybe not quite as awesome as last year's Sukkot Shake, or the Grease-inspired Sukkah Building, but eh. We do what we can.) Last year, Sukkahless, I grabbed some friends, and we slapped together tiny Sukkot with kosher graham crackers, lemon icing with etrog liquer, and rosemary branches for the roof. Sure, half the fun was probably the number of "etrogitos" we put away while indulging my inner-children, but hey. Whatever. There are ton of resources for building your own sukkah, but I like this one, only for the mention at the end of Jewcy jack-o-lanterns, which I am a big fan of.

There are all sorts of sukkah-building kits like this, of course, or like this, too.

Pimp My Sukkah: Any way you trick your sukkah out, it's all good.

Here sister is doin' it herself, and here is an interesting piece from Project Chana about using empty ushpizin chairs in support of domestic violence victims, and on that sort of note about helping women out, there is, apparently, a proposed boycott this year of a particular Sukkah-dealer's goods, as he is not forking over a get for his wife, though they did obtain a civil divorce almost a decade ago, so groups are calling for a boycott of his sukkot for his recalcitrance. And, speaking of boycotts, the Jerusalem Post is reporting today about a potential educators' strike after Sukkot.

Of course, there are a variety of things to do with your etrog post-Sukkot, ranging from the green-thumbed, to the recycled mitzvot to the delicious. As a side note, I have never seen an etrog this big in my life. Look at it! (Sorry about the lame music.)

Does anyone have any perhaps unusual or outside-the-box Sukkot traditions they want to share with the rest of the class? Hmm?