The Jewish holidays in Israel are celebrated at the right time in the right place.
By LIAT COLLINSsuccot 88(photo credit: )
At the end of the 1970s, as my family prepared for its last year in England, we celebrated Succot in style. A rather fancy, and fairly spacious, wooden tabernacle was erected in the garden, replete with the usual decorations of plastic fruit and new year's greeting cards of the kind one sent before e-mail greetings - let alone SMSs - had been invented. There were a few aliya-related posters, courtesy of the Jewish Agency, ahead of our personal exodus to the Promised Land. And, Britain being Britain, there was a small but well-equipped bar in the corner.
Britain being Britain, we needed that shot of whiskey. We sat in the booth under the stars in accordance with the commandments; we stared up at the heavens; and they frequently opened. It was not the welcome type of rain that falls in Israel after many dry summer months, which can uplift spirits and leave the land feeling cleaner. And it was not modesty that led me to wear trousers under my full-length skirt, it was the cold.
Curiosity eventually got the better of our non-Jewish neighbors (spelled "neighbours" in the Old Country) and they finally found a way to ask about the huge shed-like construction that dominated our lawn. (Unlike Israelis, they couldn't just come right out with the question.) We explained that the booth was to remind us of the tabernacles erected by the Children of Israel as they wandered through the desert: "Oh," they exclaimed. "We thought you had built a big home for your dog."
Our dalmatian - soon to make aliya and turn into a Zionist dog by default - was also confused by the succa. Many was the time she had been shut out of the house in the garden while we entertained guests in the dining room, trying to ignore her wet nose snuffling at the French windows. But never before had she been shut in the warmth of the home while we sat in the garden, wet noses sniffling, in a downpour.
If the bar could hardly be said to recall those desert dwellings of yore, neither could the weather. It was another example of the way that the Jewish festivals feel out of synch outside Israel. There is a time and a place for everything. Or as we read in Ecclesiastes on Succot: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven..."
Celebrating the religious festivals in Israel is something one does naturally. Religious and secular Jews set about constructing succas in gardens and on balconies - in fact, Israeli real estate agents often point out that properties are equipped with a mirpeset succa (a succa balcony). Stalls selling decorations become a temporary part of the urban landscape. And while the neighbo(u)rs in England had no idea what our succa was, many of those around us in Israel have no idea that the made-in-China, red and white decorations they are stringing up are meant to help celebrate Christmas in style.
While religious Jews abroad worry about missing more work days for holidays which are not well known (and Canadians this year missed the polls as they sat in their tabernacle booths), in Israel Succot is hard to miss. I wonder what our former neighbors would have made of the Four Species that are sold in temporary stalls throughout the festival. During the week-long holiday, there are special activities for children, and Jerusalem literally becomes the site of pilgrimage.
The holiday season culminates in Israel with Simhat Torah. In my Jerusalem neighborhood, it is common to see groups of religious youths dancing with Torah scrolls on the streets on their way to visit old-age homes and hospitals to bring a waft of the festival spirit to those in particular need of good cheer.
THE JEWISH holidays in Israel are definitely celebrated in an only-in-Israel way. Radio and television hosts sign off with a greeting for the new year and "hatima tova" - that we should be inscribed in the Book of Life. Slihot penitential prayers are an attraction, with special nighttime synagogue tours to take in the different liturgies. There are year round-ups of the type that the rest of the world conducts between Christmas and January 1. There is much public soul searching, which begins way before the Ten Days of Awe (aka the Ten Days of Repentance).
The 35th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War this year led to even more agonizing. Special broadcasts and newspaper features compared the 1973 war with the 2006 Second Lebanon War: Mistakes made, lessons learned, victories and losses. Nothing can surprise us anymore, one hopes.
Nowhere else in the world is Yom Kippur so palpable. Everything comes to a halt. With no cars traveling on the streets, kids come out on their bikes and scooters (on sale on special offer for a few weeks leading up to the Day of Atonement).
This year even Big Brother stopped watching for the holiest day of the year. That's Big Brother as in the immensely popular reality show. (The show's need for atonement is more understandable, in my opinion, than the genre's title of "reality.") As the country came to a complete standstill, cameras on the round-the-clock cult show were turned off and a makeshift synagogue was built onsite for a religious contestant who brought in nine friends to make up a minyan (prayer quorum).
Time does not stand still for the holiday - it goes backwards. In a unique "fast rewind," Israel ends its daylight saving time unseasonably early for Yom Kippur - the result of much political haggling by the religious parties in the past. The fast lasts 25 hours no matter what time it starts, but many feel it is easier to pass the day when one can eat again at around 6 p.m., not 7.
Maybe the general depression that descends around Yom Kippur is not the result of soul-destroying soul searching; perhaps it's simply the physiological response to dark evenings in a Mediterranean autumn.
Nowhere else do the weather forecasters issue national updates on the expected temperature over the Yom Kippur fast and the Jewish holiday season when many take to the country's nature reserves and parks. Certainly not in Britain, where the prayer for rain at this time of year seemed so redundant that it was hard to imagine just how much Israel needs it.
Succot's essence as an agricultural festival has in the New Age turned it into a "green holiday," giving it an added significance for religious and secular. Coming this time at the end of an agricultural sabbatical year - a shnat shmitta - Succot was more joyous than usual, even if the harvest aspect was almost absent. A week ago, neighbors young and old - the residents of an old-age home bordering a tiny park and kids who live in the area - got their hands dirty and finally planted seeds in our local community garden project.
We live in a global village, and it often seems as though the neighbors' grass is greener; but I'm proud that our garden in Jerusalem weathered the sabbatical year on its own and now we can get back to work nurturing and cultivating it. That is, of course, aharei hahagim - after the holidays.
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