Sukkot 101

MyJewishLearning.com

Beginning five days after Yom Kippur, Sukkot is named after the booths or huts (sukkot in Hebrew) in which Jews are supposed to dwell during this week-long celebration. According to rabbinic tradition, these flimsy sukkot represent the huts in which the Israelites dwelt during their 40 years of wandering in the desert after escaping from slavery in Egypt. The festival of Sukkot is one of the three great pilgrimage festivals (chaggim or regalim) of the Jewish year.

History

The origins of Sukkot are found in an ancient autumnal harvest festival. Indeed it is often referred to as hag ha-asif, “The Harvest Festival.” Much of the imagery and ritual of the holiday revolves around rejoicing and thanking God for the completed harvest. The sukkah represent the huts that farmers would live in during the last hectic period of harvest before the coming of the winter rains. As is the case with other festivals whose origins may not have been Jewish, the Bible reinterpreted the festival to imbue it with a specific Jewish meaning. In this manner, Sukkot came to commemorate the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert after the revelation at Mount Sinai, with the huts representing the temporary shelters that the Israelites lived in during those 40 years.

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On Yom Kippur, must we ask forgiveness for communal wrongs?

by Edmon J. Rodman, JTA, JewishJournal.com

On Yom Kippur, as we focus on our personal faults, how do we acknowledge those shortcomings that are more communal?

In synagogue, reciting line by line the Al Chet prayer, seeking atonement for the areas of our lives where in the past year we have fallen short, events in the news, even those that may have touched our lives, seem far away and better off resolved by the talking heads of the cable news.

Beating our chest for each “chet,” we ask God in page after painful page to forgive us for “rashly judging others,” “scorning parents and teachers,” even engaging in “idle chatter” and “forbidden trysts.” Isn’t that enough?

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 The High Holidays are upon us, check out our High Holidays Spotlight Kit

This Rosh Hashanah, I Challenge You to Focus on the Positives

Nina Badzin for Kveller

Two essential parts of preparing for Rosh Hashanah, our clean slate for the year, is asking forgiveness from anyone we wronged and making a list (mental or written) of the ways we fell short since the last time we heard the shofar. Ideally that hard work of going to friends, family, and anyone else deserving of our forgiveness happens in the weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah. By the time Yom Kippur rolls around 10 days later, we should be ready to confess our mistakes as a community, having already considered our personal paths to a teshuva, repentance, and how we will do better this year.

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For more information and ideas visit our High Holidays Spotlight Kit

Wholehearted Devotion

Rabbi Jacob Staub for Jewish Reconstructionist Communities

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a time for teshuvah—returning to the divinely commanded path, the Torah, that was revealed at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20), from which we have each invariably strayed over the course of the year. According to Jewish traditions, the Torah includes 613 commandments.

Why aren’t Jews overwhelmed by the sheer number of commandments?  Why don’t Jews feel condemned by the need to observe of the commandments, as Paul assumed to be the case in his Epistles?

The approach of Hasidic teachers to this question may be helpful to all people who seek to commune with the divine presence.  They observe that the biblical verse, Cursed be the one who does not observe and do the terms of the Torah (Deuteronomy 27: 26) makes no sense, because nobody is able to observe all 613 commandments.

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Preparing for the High Holidays

for ReformJudaism.org

As summer winds down and the back-to-school season approaches, so, too, do the High Holidays. Jewish tradition provides us with several reminders of the upcoming Days of Awe, as well as a number of ways we can prepare for them.

The days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are known at the Days of Awe, or Yamim Noraim in Hebrew. During this period, individuals examine their behavior over the past year, consider atonement for misdeeds, and seek a closeness with God. Practically, this is done through repentance, reconciliation, and forgiveness. The Shabbat between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur is known as Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath of Return. The name of this Sabbath is derived from the first words of the week’s haftarah, Shuvah Yisrael, “return, O Israel” (Hosea 14:2). The custom in synagogues in Eastern Europe had been for rabbis to give impassioned pleas for repentance during their sermons on this Shabbat.

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Check out Jvillage’s High Holiday+    page.

For more information and ideas visit our High Holidays Spotlight Kit

Brooklyn Shofar FlashMob - a blast of Terror

With Rosh Hashanah one month away, this should ease you into a High Holiday frame of mind.

The Youtube video reveals the shofar in a piece of performance art organized by Art Kibbutz that has serious intent.  Some take it as a travesty, a blasphemy...what do YOU think? 


 


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Also, check out our High Holidays Spotlight Kit

Remembering Arnold Scaasi, Jewish Designer to the Stars

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

Known for his tasteful gaudiness—and Barbra Streisand’s memorable 1969 Oscars outfit—the Montreal-born fashion icon believed you never had to tone down to move up

By Rachel Shukert for Tablet

Arnold Scaasi, the legendary fashion designer whose couture creations graced the backs of the greatest Hollywood stars and ladies who lunched (and for all I know, continue to), died last week at the age of 85. Born to a Jewish family in Montreal (his original last name was Isaacs, the spelling of which he ingeniously reversed in order to achieve a certain Continental flair), Scaasi was known above all for his ornate, highly embellished evening gowns and ensembles—perhaps the most famous of his creations was the sheer Peter Pan-collared pantsuit Barbra Streisand wore to the 1969 Oscars, in which she stumbled on her way to the podium (take that, Jennifer Lawrence, you copycat) to collect her Best Actress Oscar for Funny Girl. You remember it—it has all those black sequined balls hanging off of it and was the kind of drop dead chic that would land her on all the worst-dressed lists in this age of nude mermaid fishtail gowns but will be remembered until the last cockroach eats the last blade of grass on a desiccated Planet Earth.

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