Sukkot Subscribe
A selection of initiatives, blogs, resources and communities on Jewcology which focus on Sukkot.
From the Blogs
Eden Village is hiring farm educator apprentices for 2015 growing season!
- January 26, 2015
Eden Village Camp is Hiring! Submit Your Application About Eden Village Camp: Eden Village Camp aims to be a living model of a thriving, sustainable Jewish community, grounded in social responsibility and inspired Jewish spiritual life. By bringing the wisdom of our tradition to the environmental, social, and personal issues important to today’s young people, we practice a Judaism that is substantive and relevant. Through our Jewish environmental and service-learning curricula, joyful Shabbat observance, pluralistic Jewish expression, and inspiring, diverse staff ...
The MAP: Sukkot (and Shmita) Resources and Events
- October 3, 2014
SUKKOT AND SHMITA RESOURCES AND EVENTS contributed by all the organizations and initiatives on “the Map” http://jewcology.org/map-of-initiatives/ Here’s a quick bit of Sukkot Torah to start us off: “The four species of the lulav represent the four types of ecosystems in the land of Israel: desert (date palm), hills (myrtle), river corridors (willow), and sh’feilah, the lowlands (etrog). Each species has to be fresh, with the very tips intact – they can’t be dried out, because they hold the water of last year’s rain. Together, they make a kind of map ...
Spread over all of us the Sukkah of shalom, salaam, paz, peace!
- August 25, 2014
Can our Sukkot become not only symbols but peacemaking sanctuaries for both "adam" and "adamah"? As we enter the Shmita / Sabbatical Year, we may be asking what its content might be. We can begin, just a few days before Rosh Hashanah, joining the several dozen Jewish organizations that will take part in the People’s Climate March in New York City, Sunday Septembr 21, beginning at 11:30 am. Then on Rosh Hashanah (which can mean “New Year” or “Start of Transformation”), we might celebrate what the tradition sees ...
Uplifting People and Planet
- January 14, 2014
Exciting news! Just in time for Tu b’Shevat, Canfei Nesharim and Jewcology are proud to announce the launch of a new ebook exploring traditional Jewish teachings on the environment, Uplifting People and Planet: Eighteen Essential Jewish Lessons on the Environment, edited by Rabbi Yonatan Neril and Evonne Marzouk. This ebook is the most comprehensive study in English of how Jewish traditional sources teach us to protect our natural resources and preserve the environment. From food to trees, energy to water, wealth to biodiversity, the book studies eighteen ...
The Urban Adamah Fellowship Now Accepting 2014 Applications
- October 17, 2013
Connect to Something Bigger: Earth, Community, Social Justice, Jewish Spirituality The Urban Adamah Fellowship, based in Berkeley, CA, is a three-month residential training program for young adults (ages 21–31) that combines urban organic farming, social justice training and progressive Jewish learning and living within the setting of an intentional community. Through the operation of Urban Adamah’s one-acre organic farm and internships with social justice organizations, fellows gain significant skills, training and experience in all aspects of ...
Constructing Imperfection
- September 24, 2013
Blog post by Joshua Boydstun, Rabbinical Student at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College ------------------ My camping tent has seen its fair share of adventure: Caked in the red dust and baked in the summer sun of the Sonoran Desert. Encrusted with the frozen rain of a Yellowstone autumn. Rocked with rain, whipped with wind and sprayed by a skunk while the remains of Hurricane Ivan swept through Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Plateau. Yet through it all, my seam-sealed tent has remained safe and secure, warm and watertight. I’ve enjoyed the pleasures of ...
Sustainable Sukkot: Harvest Wind & Sun, Not Carbon
- September 17, 2013
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Traditionally the first action Jews would take after breaking the fast of Yom Kippur was to act for change – to hammer the first nail toward building a sukkah, the fragile hut with a leafy, leaky roof that is the central symbol of Sukkot, the harvest festival. That fragile hut is a calling to live lightly on the Earth, so beginning to build it is a commitment to compassion for all life-forms as well as for all human beings. So in this letter I want to share a possible “template” about Sukkot. I am hoping we can at this point reach out to ...
Sukkot, Simchat Torah, and Vegetarianism
- September 9, 2013
There are many connections that can be made between vegetarianism and the joyous Jewish festivals of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret (the Eighth Day of Solemn Assembly), and Simchat Torah: 1. Sukkot commemorates the 40 years when the ancient Israelites lived in the wilderness in frail huts and were sustained by manna. According to Isaac Arama (1420-1494), author of Akedat Yitzchak, and others, the manna was God's attempt to reestablish for the Israelites the vegetarian diet (Genesis 1:29) that prevailed before the flood, in the time ...
Darkness Upon the Face of the Deep
- October 27, 2012
Darkness upon the Face of the Deep –חשך על פני תהום Rabbi Ed Rosenthal “In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was null and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God hovered on the surface of the water.” (Gen.1:1-2). While we are taught that God is omnipresent and there is no place where the Divine presence does not dwell; there are few places that evoke a spiritual experience or a connection with the Divine more surely than the surface of water. ...
What does it mean to be a “Sustainable Jew” (CJN Sept 2010)
- January 18, 2012
This column was originally published in the Canadian Jewish News - September 22, 2010 Have you ever thought of Sukkot as a holiday which celebrates the Sustainable Jew In ancient Israel, Sukkot had a major agricultural focus. The celebration was a thanksgiving for the fruit harvest and the blessings of nature in the year that had passed. Today, Sukkot is a Jewish Festival where we step out of the comfort of our own homes, and enter temporary dwellings where we are exposed to the vagaries of the weather while performing the mitzvah of “Leshev Bsukah&rdqu...
My Zaide, Sukkot and Food Insecurity
- October 31, 2011
As a child at Sukkot I recall my beloved Zaide Shaya Yosef Z”L eating meals and sleeping in the simple Sukkah behind his house. Zaide was a pious Jew who left his Polish shtetl, Checiny, in order to bring his wife and children to a better life in Canada. Stories my mother tells about Checiny describe a home not much more secure than Zaide’s fragile Sukkah. Access to food, especially fresh produce, was limited. The family was often hungry and malnourished. I wonder what Zaide thought and felt as he celebrated Z’man Simchateinu, the ...
Forest Gardening: A Living Sukkah
- October 22, 2011
Sitting in our Sukkah at Eden Village, a hexagon of black locust from our forest, I can gaze in each direction and learn something about the place I am dwelling. I can look out to the east and see our production fields, mostly in covercrop of oats, with an occasional row of cosmos or cabbage, and behind the fields a cob oven, and behind that, our kitchen. To the south, a wetland and forest, from which we harvested the black locust and the invasive phragmites which we used as schach to cover our Sukkah. To the north, the office, theatre,and share circle, center of the ...
PRAY, PLANT, GROW
- October 19, 2011
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Wednesday, October 19, 2011 PRAY, PLANT, GROW repeat! Many of us are familiar with the Pray, Eat, Pray, pattern of Jewish practice. Well, in this Harvest Season- which is also the spiritual season of birth and renewal- a New Year brings us many opportunities for reflection, renewal and redemption. Today is Hoshana Rabbah, bringing us to the end of Sukkos, and time to put away our Lulav and Estrog- Let's take action and put into practice our words to connect mind, body and spirit, to live in a way that our life is our thoughts, deeds and ...
The many meanings of Sukkot
- October 19, 2011
I love the holiday of Sukkot, and for many reasons. I feel it is a holiday with many meanings, and many lovely paradoxes. I love how Sukkot encourages us to spend more time in the outdoors, and yet how it encloses us within walls and a roof, even as we are exposed to the elements at the same time. I love how it reinforces our human ingenuity in building structures, and yet reminds us how fragile and impermanent these structures really are. I love its inherent earthy-ness, how it connects us to trees and fruits through the lulav and etrog, and also connects us to the ...
“Water, Water Everywhere and Nor any Drop to Drink”: Praying for Rain at the Right Time and in the Right Amount
- October 16, 2011
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When I was in Israel for my Junior Year abroad in 1974, I remember that on Erev Sukkot the headline on the Jerusalem Post read: “Sukkot Starts Tonight, Weatherman Predicts No Rain.” For those of us in the Northeast this year Sukkot started with a lot of rain continuing a very wet few months that caused severe flooding in many areas. In Israel, rain at this time of year would very unusual which is why the Mishnah says the following: All the seven days [of the festival of Sukkot] a man must make the Sukkah his permanent abode and his house his temporary ...
Why Sukkot might be better than Purim
- October 9, 2011
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Both holidays are about being joyous, celebration, and sharing your joy with community. Purim focused on the joy of not getting killed off as a people, while Sukkot celebrates the (hopefully) fruitful harvest, a result of hard human work and physical support (sun, rain) from G!d. Purim gets points for yummy treats, and I should know as the 4 year host of a hummentashen bake off. But Sukkot deals the upper hand for many reasons, including 7 whole days of fun. It is also one of the holidays with multiple names, two being: Zeman Simkhateinu, the Season of our Rejoicing ...
This Year We Meditate
- September 28, 2011
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We've been building towards this event for a long time. On October 18th, in the year of 5772, we will have a different kind of Sukkot. We will be building a Sukkah on our organic fertile land, on the land that we cultivated in West Rogers Park, the land that has given us our strong backs. And we will be collaborating with the Center for Jewish Mindfulness and participating in a community meditation led by Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell. I know, I know, a Sukkah is meant to be dwelled in according to the mitzvot. But, I wasn't raised in a community ...
