All About The Holidays
Click the image to the right to share this Sukkot digital flipbook with your children and family? Happy Sukkot!
How Does Sukkot Celebrate The Environment?
Sep 17, 2018
By: Ilana Ungar, Pearlstone JOFFEE Fellow
As our fields are at the height of abundance and our days filled with sunshine we reach a joyful holiday, our Jewish harvest festival, Sukkot. On the full moon of Tishrei we celebrate the season’s bounty, pray for rain, rejoice in our Sukkah commemorating rituals that give us spiritual, emotional and physical sustenance.
Traditionally for seven days and seven nights people gathered in community to eat and sleep in Sukkot. It is a time for us to be connected to nature not only through the bounty of our fields but also through sleeping among the stars. It is a time for us to take a step back from our busy fast paced, technology filled lives and to reconnect with ourselves, our community and our natural world. I grew up not having a deep connection to Sukkot and its earth-based connection, so I am excited this year to truly immerse myself in our tradition.
As we build our Sukkah in community, we build our roof (s’khakh) of anything that grows from the ground and has not been manufactured into something new. Symbolically how our structure is built represents the connection between nature and our man-made world. Our sukkah teaches us to find comfort in the vulnerability of the natural world and to witness all its beauty. Our Sukkah connects hearts, minds and souls to the stars, rain and holy winds that breathes all life.
The Torah states: “On the first day, you shall take the first fruit of hadar (goodly) trees (an etrog or citron), branches of palm trees (lulav), boughs of leafy trees (hadassim) and myrtle, and willows of the field (aravot), and you shall rejoice before the Lord thy God seven days” (Leviticus 23:40). These four species represent the beauty and bounty of the land of Israel’s harvest. Each of these four species represent the Earth’s primary habitats (desert, mountains, lowland and river). We wave our four species in the four directions of the wind: around us, above and below us, and inward towards us. Something very interesting is that these four species are the thirstiest plants in their bioregional zone in Israel. Is this a coincidence? I think not! During Sukkot, we pray for rain for our next harvest season. What might this rain represent? Even the thirstiest among us should have enough. I ask you to think about what is going to sustain you for the next year? Sustain us a Jewish community? And sustain mother nature?
I invite you to take time this Sukkot think about what it means to be living in a time of global climate change and uncertainty. Let us connect to ourselves, our environment and our community. Let us rejoice in our bounty not only inwards but outwards, intentionally pray for rain and the healing of mother nature and reconnect to the basic fact that mother nature gives us all we need.
Teach your children about Yom Kippur. Click on the "Jewish Holidays" digital flipbook to the right.
Did you know that food and drink are not the only things we avoid on Yom Kippur?
Other traditional restrictions on Yom Kippur include bathing, wearing perfume or lotions, having sexual relations, and wearing leather shoes. We avoid five things in total, including food and drink, in an effort to prioritize our spiritual lives and reflect on the true meaning and direction of our lives. These five measures, parallel the five books of the Torah, the literary source of all Jewish wisdom and spirituality.
In honor of our beloved father Naftali Ben Isaac and Clara Zaslavski, ז״ל
Did you know that the word “scapegoat” originates in Yom Kippur?
Jews historically have been popular scapegoats, one of the motivations for antisemitism. We have been blamed for a wide range of ills not of our creation. But, and we’re not kid-ding, we really do deserve credit blame) for the term “scapegoat”. In Leviticus 16:8 (in the Torah portion Achrei Mot), the Jewish High Priest is instructed on Yom Kippur to lay his hands upon a goat while confessing the sins of the entire community – and then to throw the animal off a cliff. This is the biblical origin of the term scapegoat that describes someone blamed for the wrongs of others.
Why Do We Go To A Natural Body Of Water After Rosh Hashana Services (Tashlich)?
Although not officially a part of the synagogue service, an additional custom developed in medieval times called Tashlich, which means “casting out.” On the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah, Jews gather by a body of water, recite special verses, and then throw crumbs of bread into the water in a symbolic gesture of casting off their sins. Perhaps in an echo of the ancient biblical “scapegoat ceremony”, the fish are expected to eat the sin-crumbs and take them away. Whenever the first day of Rosh Hashanah falls on a Sabbath, the Tashlich ceremony is performed on the second day of Rosh Hashanah.
Why Is The Shofar Sounded During Rosh HaShanah services?
The most well-known and beloved of Rosh Hashanah synagogue observances is the sounding of the ram’s horn, the shofar, to herald the beginning of the new Jewish year. The Torah describes Rosh Hashanah as “a sacred occasion commemorated with loud blasts.” (Leviticus 23:24) Several blessings are recited before the blowing of the shofar, then approximately100 blasts are sounded throughout the rest of the worship services. Among the various reasons given for the blowing of the shofar is that the coronation of kings in ancient times was supposedly marked with the sounding of a shofar. In addition, because Rosh Hashanah is also a time of spiritual introspection and repentance, the shofar essentially calls us back to our senses and serves to remind us to mend our ways. The blasts of the shofar are divided into three kinds: Tekiah, one long sounding; Shevarim, three somewhat shorter soundings equal in length to one tekiah; and finally, Teruah, a series of at least nine staccato notes, also equal in length to one Tekiah blast.
What Are The Special Synagogue Observances On Rosh HaShanah?
As one of the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the new Jewish calendar year, is marked by the addition of numerous unique and elaborate prayer services. Understood by the rabbis as an annual coronation of God as the ultimate spiritual sovereign (King) of the Jewish people - and, indeed, of the cosmos - Rosh Hashanah worship services are characterized by a pageantry intended to parallel the royal celebrations in ancient kingdoms. In addition, Rosh Hashanah is the formal beginning of the Days of Awe, in which Jews are called upon to begin a solemn process of introspection and repentance for past misdeeds. Therefore, in addition to the royal images of God prevalent in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, there are numerous prayers dealing with our personal, internal spiritual life and external behavior and conduct. The most well-known and beloved of Rosh Hashanah synagogue observances is the sounding of the ram’s horn, the shofar, to herald the beginning of the new Jewish year. Approximately 100 blasts are sounded throughout the worship services.
High Holidays? Why “High”, and What Exactly Is Involved?
Although the High Holidays - the two days of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) - occupy three days only, they lie within a web of liturgy and customs that extend from the beginning of the preceding Hebrew month of Elul (usually mid August) through Yom Kippur (Usually late September). The focus of this entire period is the process of Teshuvah, or repentance, whereby a Jew admits to sins, asks for forgiveness, and resolves not to repeat the sins. Recognizing the psychological difficulty of self-examination and personal change, the rabbis instituted a 40-day period, starting on the first of the month of Elul, its “High” intensity spiraling toward culmination on Yom Kippur, a day devoted entirely to fasting and repentance.
WHAT IS the meaning of "5782" in The "Jewish New Year 5782"?
The Jewish calendar not only has its own unique months, but it also numbers years differently from the secular calendar. The year 2021, for instance, was roughly equivalent to the Jewish year 5781. (Specifically, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, in September 2021, marks the transition from 5781 to 5782.) The counting of Jewish years, as we know it today, dates from the Middle Ages and was invented by Christian monks. Thus, in secular texts, Jewish time is often noted as “A.M.” for Anno Mundo, literally, “years of the world.” The monks who invented it believed they were calculating biblical dates from the birth of the world. In other words, according to this interpretation of Biblical dating, 5782 years have passed since Creation.