Christmas in the Sukkah
FACKENHEIM, EMIL
ON MY MIND EMIL L. FACKENHEIM Christmas in the Sukkah Although my family and I made aliyah (from Toronto) five years ago, last year was the first year I was in Israel for Sukkot. In previous...
...Then the big deal, the sukkah itself...
...Let there be lots of simchas...
...We are about to leave when I remember we still need decorations for the sukkah...
...They were carrying lulavim and etrogim, so they pelted the erring Sadducee with their etrogim, creating a riot...
...At Teddy Kollek's direction, the trees of Jerusalem are pruned just before Sukkot...
...But soon the fact is impressed on me that so easy it is not...
...To this calumny, the cerebral Jew I found at the seminary seemed to bear an uncomfortable resemblance...
...I learned of this story during my first year at Berlin's liberal rabbinical seminary in 1935...
...City trees must be pruned some time in the year...
...Now, this would no longer do...
...Two weeks earlier in Mea Shearim, when I bought a shofar on the day before Rosh Hashanah, I found the same thing...
...Table after table displaying lulavim, myrtle twigs and ettogim...
...Jeff has a jeep...
...In Toronto, we always had one...
...The ceremony, however, has no biblical warrant...
...It is not threatening...
...The Christians have a simcha and we have a svncha...
...for a sukkah just before Sukkot, they will try to jack up the price...
...Aliyah has many absurdities...
...There are indeed only two places, the Mea Shearim enclave of ultra-Orthodoxy, and the shuk (open market) in Machaneh Yehudah...
...In ancient times, the festival that brought the largest throngs to the Temple was Sukkot...
...The seminary also brought me face to face for the first time with Jews devoted to prayer and study, but rejecting everything else...
...We show this to the storekeeper...
...Just before Sukkot these places fill up with throngs of people—and a taxi one would have to fight for...
...Amid the pre-Sukkot crowd I ponder, and I conclude that I am seeing the Judaism of the people, and that it has an immense vitality...
...it is not a sign of a latter-day Judaism about to expire...
...I expect to haggle...
...the selection was excellent, and the prices marked and reasonable...
...Sukkot in Jerusalem without a decent sukkah...
...That vitality can still be found in Jerusalem...
...Jeff finds a place to park, but already the throngs are immense...
...Sukkot is often referred to simply as "chug" (holiday)— the festival par excellence...
...Not bothering to go inside, he pondered the meaning of the building, surrounded as it was by a cemetery...
...The Jews, Barth concluded on this evidence, are the shadow of a nation...
...just go downtown and buy it...
...In previous years, when the rest of my family was in Israel, they made do with a veranda-^uAia/i, too small for more than two to sit in...
...Why doesn't anyone ever tell the world that, despite all its much-advertised troubles, the Judaism of the people is alive in Jerusalem...
...Christmas decorations in the sukkah...
...He might have concluded otherwise...
...The storekeeper says: "So...
...Inside, examining the decorations, I notice some of them are marked "for Christmas," made in South Korea...
...Jeff, a friend of our son David, comes to the rescue...
...The deal completed, he gives me good wishes and hopes to see me again next year...
...The incident hardly reflects a deep piety...
...As for the schach, the greens and branches to make the roof of our sukkah, the mayor provides...
...I could also picture myself, during my first Sukkot in Jerusalem—without a sukkah...
...Throngs of people, mostly Pharisees, were present...
...What is it here...
...The festival celebrates the divine protection given to the Israelites in their wandering through the desert, but because it also celebrates the harvest, the Pharisees created a water-libation ceremony at the altar on the Temple grounds: without water there would be no harvest...
...At seven in the morning the three of us set out for the shuk...
...I could visualize myself, equipped not only with lulav and elrog but also with all the implements for building a sukkah, all bought and paid for, stranded, unable to get home...
...A stranger with a lulav accosts me: his wife, he says, already bought a lulav, so he will sell me the one he bought for half price...
...What it does show, however, is that the Judaism of these people had a tremendous vitality...
...The late, great Protestant theologian Karl Barth once visited an old synagogue in Prague...
...In Toronto, this would be rank assimilationism...
...In Jerusalem, the Judaism of the people is vital enough to allow Christmas decorations in the sukkah...
...I remember how, long ago in Berlin, I enjoyed reading in the Mishnah about the riot on the Temple grounds, the Pharisees throwing their etrogim at the Sadducee...
...Our enemies accuse us of a shadowlike existence...
...Impossible...
...The students included many who were devoted to Judaism, but many others who were simply lost souls-—Jews rejected by their own country, unwanted anywhere, who were at the seminary just to be somewhere, doing something...
...Why doesn't anyone tell the Diaspora of this Jerusalem city hall directive...
...It turns out I am wrong: The price is openly advertised, it is reasonable, and the sukkah itself is good...
...Imagine Karl Barth in the Jerusalem shuk just before Sukkot, trying to buy a sukkah...
...So the streets are full of branches for people to pick up for their sukkah roofs...
...The neighbors say it is easy...
...I spot a nearby store...
...Where downtown...
...It was a depressing place...
...So once when a Sadducee's turn came to officiate on Sukkot, he showed his contempt for the Pharisee-ordained ceremony by pouring the water, not on the altar, but on his feet...
...Ultra-Orthodoxy has gotten into the modern world...
...But there is more...
Vol. 14 • October 1989 • No. 6
