Every year we are instructed to build impermanent houses; sukkotLit. Booths or huts Sukkot is the autumn harvest Festival of Booths, is celebrated starting the 15th of the Jewish month of Tishrei. Jews build booths (sukkot), symbolic of the temporary shelters used by the ancient Israelites when they wandered in the desert. Traditionally, Jews eat and sleep in the sukkah for the duration of the holiday (seven days in Israel and eight outside of Israel). The lulav (palm frond), willow, myrtle, and etrog fruit are also waved together., with loosely thatched roofs, open to the light of the harvest moon, stars and now, ceaseless rockets. Three flimsy walls cannot keep out the wind, fear or shrapnel, nor support the weight of generational hate that protects no one; but this is the tradition.
Oh, you brothers of different mothers, your own children cry, huddled in rubble and ash. They are starving, longing for sustenance, even stale crusts and crumbs; dreaming of peace they have never tasted.
If your father could see you now, how he too would weep.
And then, he’d welcome everyone, offer flasks of sweet wine, olives and dates grown on the surrounding hills, flat bread prepared by your mothers’ hands; mixing the scant flour that remains, with salty tears and rain water collected, baked on the sacred stone altar of generosity, compassion and healing, slathered with love, honey, patience and hope.
Firm, but gentle, he’d instruct you to sit on the floor, gaze upon one another’s faces, and eat. “Be grateful,” he’d say. “Learn to live together as the family you have always been. Together, let us be a blessing.”
