Sukkot is the Jewish Environment Holiday in Israel
This week marks the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Jews will build small huts and live in them for a week.
Tonight marks the first night of Sukkot, the Jewish Festival of Booths. This post cross-posted at Green Prophet by Alex Gutman, explains the history and traditions of this inherently green holiday. If you are in Israel this week and notice people living in small wood huts, it’s not the tent protestors, but Jews of all ages living in their booth, to remind them of Exodus from ancient times.
Sukkot, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles, couldn’t come at a better time than now. After the heaviness of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Sukkot joins Passover and Shavuot as a Jewish holiday which celebrates agriculture and is known as Z’man Simchateinu, the season of our rejoicing. It is the most festive of all the holidays and lasts for seven days and has a direct link to the environment. Read more
The agony and the ecstasy in Jerusalem’s excavations
Filed under: History and Culture, Holidays, Travel
by Yossi Yeinan, Keshet
Ancient stairs uncovered in City of David
It’s been 50 years since Irving Stone wrote his popular biography of Michelangelo, “The Agony and the Ecstasy”. If not for copyright restrictions, The Agony and the Ecstasy might be the title for a new history of Jerusalem.
Life here is like that – exciting and intense – and every so often there is a news story or a new discovery that captures that intensity perfectly and encapsulates what life in Jerusalem is all about.
I experienced a moment like that just recently when I toured not-yet opened areas of the City of David National Park. Over the last five years, archeologists have uncovered a monumental staircase nearly half a mile long that ran – in Second Temple times – from the Shiloach (or Siloam) Pool at the southern end of ancient Jerusalem up to the Temple.
A drainage channel lined with beautifully dressed stone runs directly underneath the staircase along its entire length and will be opened to the public later this year.
Flavius Josephus and the rabbis of the Talmud describe these stairs in Temple times at Succot – the harvest festival. Imagine the scene: the granaries and storehouses were overflowing with the bounty of the summer harvest and tens of thousands of pilgrims – men, women, and children – would come to Jerusalem and ascend these stairs festooned with bright torches and jugglers for the festive occasion. The Jewish people would give thanks and pray for the fall rains before returning home to plant the winter crops.
The unity of temple times gave way to infighting (will we ever learn?), the Romans destroyed the Temple, and some of the surviving Jews hid in the drainage tunnel underneath the stairs – only to be smoked out and murdered by the Roman conquerors.
We know the story because Josephus recorded it, and because in the last few years we’ve found the cooking vessels and household items left behind by the Jews who lived and died here more than 1,900 years ago.
Datelines
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
David’s post and all the newspaper, web and radio pieces about Rabin got me thinking about my own relationship to dates, particularly the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars, which are the two calendars we use regularly around here.
I myself was at a friend’s 30th birthday dinner the night that Rabin was shot. I remember feeling very adult at that gathering, which was at a Jerusalem restaurant, and being somewhat consumed with what was happening around me. When we heard the news, we quickly paid the bill and went our separate ways. Having moved to Israel only a few months earlier, I was still living with my parents and we gathered around the television set, waiting for news.
And so, for me, Rabin’s death is always wrapped up in my first months here, when I was figuring things out and deciding whether I wanted to stay here. The date that I think of is November 4, not the 12th of Heshvan, and the current remembrances and ceremonies seem almost early to me. The length of time, however, 15 years, corresponds with how many years I’m living here. Long, and yet not so much time.
But as I settled into life here, I not only got used to the army clock — i.e., it’s 13:00 right now — but have certain dates in my own life that I think of according to the Hebrew calendar, and not the Gregorian one. While I still don’t really know my Hebrew birthday date, and yes, there are those who only celebrate their birthday according to the Hebrew calendar, the dates that I instinctively think of in Hebrew are my wedding anniversary and the birthday of my twins.
Why? Probably because my anniversary is on Lag B’Omer, which is a big celebration day around here, and we specifically chose that day for our marriage, liking that we’d be one of many celebrations that day, including bonfires and cookouts. So sometimes we celebrate on Lag B’Omer, and sometimes on the ‘loazi’ date of (meaning, roughly, Gregorian), May 27, which basically just gives us more than one option for marking the day.
As for my boys, they were born on Erev Sukkot, the eve of the holiday, about six weeks before their due date. They were not what I was planning to do on that particular holiday, but now that they’re very much here, I like remembering that day during Sukkot, as well as weeks later, on October 13.
Then again, there’s something to be said for commemorating a moment, happy or sad, on two different dates. The perspective changes, but the memory remains the same.
Nostalgia Sunday – Shlomit’s Sukkah of Peace
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, War
Composer Naomi Shemer wrote the song Shlomit Bonah Sukkat Shalom (“Shlomit builds a house of peace”) in 1974 as part of an album of childrens’ songs. The date is telling: released one year after the Yom Kippur war, the song expressed hope for a battle-fatigued nation, battered by a difficult political climate and uncertain diplomatic situation. The song has since become a beloved standard for Israeli children and the adults who were once children; in four verses, Shemer manages to encapsulate the traditions of the sukkot holiday and the ideal of better world.
Here is the song as performed at the time by Hanan Goldblatt, Aliza Rosen and Gabi Eldor.
And here is a version sung decades later by kiddie show presenters Rinat and Yoyo, her robot assistant. (I don’t know why she has a robot).
Pop and rock musicians aren’t immune to the song’s evergreen appeal. Perpetual popster Shlomo Artzi has led crowds in song, and rockers Mashina did a full fledged cover…
…plus mizrachi singer Avi Peretz recently pitched in with a Middle Eastern-flavored version.
Shemer was never apolitical in her writing and was certainly associated with Israel’s right-wing, but even she might be nonplussed at the heavy-handed way in which her song was parodied this past week by comedy site LatmaTV. There aren’t English subtitles so here is the gist: the world is accusing Shlomit of destroying the peace process by building her sukkah, which she will proceed to build anyway. (I did say “heavy-handed”, didn’t I?) Oh well, as you watch, bear in mind that there’s no word in Hebrew for “subtlety”.
Foto Friday – Miraculous Pomegranates
Filed under: design, Environment, Food, Foto Friday, General, health, History and Culture, Holidays, Medical Breakthroughs, Picture of the Week, Religion, Technology
It was at about 9:30 last night when I spilled the pomegranate seeds on the floor. While picking them up, one by one, I reflected first on the story of Demeter and Persephone, then on the fact that some Jewish schoolchildren are taught that there are 365 seeds in a pomegranate (the number of days in the year) while others are taught that there are 613 (the number of mitzvot or good deeds), and finally (it took some time collect them all) about the long-standing Jewish relationship with the pomegranate as a symbol of fertility and plenty. Well, it has a lot of seeds so you can see why that might be.
© Пётр Рогов
It’s hard to say where Judaism’s connection to this beautiful and fascinating fruit begins; some scholars believe is was the pomegranate, not the apple, that got Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden of Eden. It is mentioned often in the Bible both as a fruitand as a symbol and is one with the Seven Species celebrated at Sukkot.
© RomKri
What is for certain is that the pomegranate has been in this region for thousands of years. According to the California Rare Fruit Growers (CRFG) site, “The pomegranate is native from Iran to the Himalayas in northern India and was cultivated and naturalized over the whole Mediterranean region since ancient times.” The pomegranate features prominently in this mosaic fruit basket from the Nabatean city of Mamshit.
Photo: Pikiwiki
Also from CRFG: “The pomegranate widely cultivated throughout India and the drier parts of southeast Asia, Malaya, the East Indies and tropical Africa, and was introduced into California by Spanish settlers in 1769.” In those days, pomegranates and their juice were valued as much for their medicinal properties as for their beauty, but in modern times they were for decades nothing more than a martini mixer or an exotic decorative item.
Photo: Pikiwiki
And then researchers like Dr. Ephraim Lansky, co-founder of Israel’s Rimonest came along, with proof — as reported by ISRAEL21c — of the pomegranate’s high anti-oxidant activity: “the stuff of potential anti-cancer therapies”.
Israel wasn’t the first country to produce pomegranates for commercial export but — as always — is an innovator. Israel was first, for example to give pomegranate juice an upgrade via wineries such as Azarad and Rimon, which produce varieties such as dessert wine, port style wine and dry wine, all the while touting the fruit’s antioxidant properties.
The rise in global interest for all things Punica granatum has resulted Israel’s doubling its pomegranate growing capacity, and the establishment of companies like Pomeg-Tech that provide expertise to those wishing to get into the pomegranate growing game. Here, in case you’ve never seen it, is a picture of the fruit’s flower:
Photo: Lior Almagor, Frommycamera.com
And Israeli pomegranate innovations don’t stop there: Shoham, inventors of a new gadget, the ART – Arils Removal Tool (that’s a pomegranate seed plucker to you and me), were recently awarded the 2010 Innovation Award at Fruit Logistica Berlin, one of the major events in the fresh produce industry. Here’s a picture of the happy Shoham team. An instructional video can be found on their website – and while it can’t prevent you from dropping the finished product on the floor, I can vouch that the ART actually does the job.
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