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September 29, 2004
Composed before the tragic fall of rockets on Sderot, killing two children
This evening the Jewish people, and many Christians as well, observe the start of the weeklong holiday of Sukkot, Feast of Tabernacles, celebrating the impermanent nature of all things and the fruits of the first harvest.
Just to say the word "tabernacles" is to transport oneself to a faraway world and mindset, commemorating as the weeklong festival does the forty-year wandering of the Jewish people in the desert after its exodus from Egypt three-plus millennia ago. A tabernacle is fancy name for a booth or temporary shelter. It is a special kind of structure, carefully prescribed in the Bible, consisting of a frame with cloth or plastic walls, with a permeable roof covering of reeds or palm fronds. Inside there are colorful decorations and posters with religious meaning or hanging fruits native to the land of Israel.
Throughout the country, Israelis create booths on their roofs, balconies, and backyards. Families crowd into the sukka for a festive meal. Each day they will invite a different superhero of the Bible-Moses, Aaron, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Aaron-to join them for the meal. Indeed, observant people will eat only in a sukka for the entire week, and many will sleep in a sukka, reliving the experience of a desert sojourn, with the stars and moon shining through the rooftop reeds and fronds. In the morning, and each day of the festivals, religious Jews will take their carefully selected and inspected etrog (citron) fruit and, holding it in the left hand together with a bound combination of lulav (palm stalk), hadasim (myrtle), and aravot (willow) in the right, saying a prayer and shaking the "four species" in the left, right, front, back, up and down.
The ritual, and the festival as a whole, is imbued with all manner of symbolism, much of its designed to create a bond of continuity and personal identification with fellow celebrants and with a lineage of ancestors going back to time immemorial. The feast of tabernacles is one of the three Jewish festivals requiring an obligatory pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Sukkot is unique in its Biblical invitation of the nations (non-Jews) to join in the annual journey to Jerusalem. Each year since 1980, this year not excluded, thousands of non-Jews gather from the four corners of the earth and parade, at the invitation of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, in a show of solidarity with the state of Israel.
Traditionally, the Jewish people identify the Feast of Tabernacles with the coming of the Messiah. According to the prophetic vision of Zechariah 14, the nations of the world will one day come up to Jerusalem to celebrate Tabernacles during Messiah's reign on earth. So, too, the holiday is associated with the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple twice built and destroyed on a Mount in Jerusalem. During the feast the Jewish people pray: "May the all Merciful One raise up for us the fallen tabernacle (sukkot) of David" (Amos 9:11), and implicit in this call is a prayer for the end of wandering and the erection of a permanent structure in Jerusalem.
This week the government of Israel issued a formal warning that section of the Mount are in danger of collapse, the result of illegal excavations by the Moslem Wakf and the expected press of tens of thousands of Ramadan worshippers expected in the coming weeks.
At the same time, the impermanence of the Jewish presence in Our Land is at the center of the agenda. Jews of Gaza and Samaria are warned to flee their homes in which they have lived for generations, among the earliest areas of Jewish settlement, less they be imprisoned. Their houses and synagogues are to be razed, their graves uprooted, their property turned over to the Palestinian Authority and perhaps, we learned this week, to enrich Ariel Sharon's closest adviser, owner of an organization that reportedly plans to build a casino on the ruins of Gush Katif. The residents of Sderot live in daily fear of what may fall on them from the sky, this even before Sharon further loosens control on the enemy's ability to terrorize civilians.
Four years ago the visit of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount was seized as an excuse by the Palestinians to launch an unending spasm of violence, and this week's anniversary has been marked by more violence. 1017 Israeli deaths, 5600 wounded. This year, thanks to the erection of the security barrier, and intensive action by the IDF, the trend was reversed. But the prospective turmoil in Gaza serves to heat up the area. The threat of a nuclear Iran hangs over our head like a sword of Damocles. In Israel there is the feeling of impermanence and vulnerability, even though we are the people with perhaps the deepest and unbroken connection to Our Land. When people talk about the small percentage Jews represent in Gaza, I think about the state of Israel, a tiny rowboat in a sea of hostile Arabs and Moslems.
The festival of Sukkot has also been linked, traditionally, with the onset of the War of Gog and Magog. Jewish and Christian mystics have scoured ancient texts and numerology to predict on which day, and in which year, the great confrontation that climaxes in "Armageddon" will transpire. Though we will not join this festival of speculation, the terrorist attacks on America have certainly raised the specter of a regional or even a global conflict with unforeseen dimensions and consequences.
For many Israelis, Sukkot is traditionally a time not just for religious pilgrimage but also, for many Israelis, traveling for pleasure, both inside and outside the country. But then again, this is not a holiday of creature comforts, as we are commanded to eat and sleep in our flimsy tabernacles. So, too, our thoughts go out to the men and women of the Israeli Defense Forces and police who, in their makeshift shelters, bases and tents, risk their lives, day and night, to protect the nation so that the rest of us can safely enjoy the holiday.
All too often, the fate of one's individual sukka in Israel is determined by the unceremonious arrival of the country's first rain, often accompanied by wild winds that test the endurance of its makeshift construction. In a region suffering from a severe drought, rain will not be an unwelcome visitor this year. A fresh gust, or even a gale, will not bring the end of the world, even if it blows away a palm frond or two. The sukka, we know, is intended to be impermanent, and the inevitable onset of autumn weather is itself a confirmation of the inevitable and reassuring changing of the seasons.
One effect of the current season of danger that we at israelinsider have felt in the many letters we receive is the drawing together of Jews and Christians, secular people and believers, to face a common threat and to fulfill a common mission. We may or may not disagree about the identity of the Messiah, or even when and whether that redemptive force will arrive. But we are bound by a common tradition built on shared principles and a religious heritage rooted in the Bible, a spiritual history that emerged from and returned to this holy land and its destiny as the wellspring of the One God.
Let us, at this late hour, also reach out to those adherents of Islam who are not enamored with the cult of death to which so many of their coreligionists are fatally addicted, the other monotheistic faith that traces its lineage back to the patriarch Abraham. We each have our respective views of history, but we must find a way to live as neighbors in the future. To all we extend a welcome to enter our sukka of peace as equals and as friends, honored guests in celebrating the narrow strip of territory that we Israelis can at long last call home.
Each us is a wanderer in the wilderness of history, and every person and people deserves a place to rest. Let us hope, too, that our Palestinian neighbors will learn to live with us without violence, so that they too may enjoy their own place under the sun, where their weary exiles may be gathered in.
I envision israelinsider as a kind of year-round virtual sukka on the 'net, our portal open to visitors interested in a daily dose or an occasional sample of an authentic Israeli flavor, albeit "in translation." We hope and pray that your festival, wherever you may be, is filled with only the gentle winds of peace and tranquility.
May we all find shelter in affirming the permanent return of the Jewish people to its long-lost homeland and the universal recognition of its rightful place in the family of nations. May strong Jewish leadership emerge that guides a renaissance of our nation and the rebuilding of our Home, speedily in our days. May the whole world come to enjoy the fruit of our national flourishing, before or after the coming of the Messiah. Welcome inside.
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