Wednesday, September 14,1994 — THE BULLETIN
By AVRAHAM WEISS
Synagogues are packed when Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are upon us. In stark contrast, however, just five days after Yom Kippur, when Succot, the Holiday of Booths arrives, synagogues will be empty.
But the truth is, Succot is more reflective of the genuine Jewish spirit thain is Yom Kippur.
InhisishHa Haiacha, (Halachic Man) the late great Ra v,, Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, distinguished between the individual religious person and the Jewish religious person.
The universal religious person perceives the body and soul to be in conflict. For this individual, the pathway to spiritual bliss is the rejection of the body, the limiting of the physical, the escaping from this-worldly pleasures. This is the philosophy of fundamental Christianity and of the Eastern religions. Theirs is world of asceticism, of self-denial.
For the !sh Ha-Halacha, however, the body is neither to be glorified nor denigrated, deiHed nor rejected; rather it is to be sanctified. The pathway to spirituality is not the rejection of the physical, but rather the discovery of meaning and spirituality within it.
For the Ish Ha-Halacha, there is no activity devoid of religious significance. The way one loves, the w^y one conducts himself/ herself in business, the way one eats, are all no less holy than praying and fasting.
Viewed in a vacuum, Yom Kippur is the universal religious experience — an escape from this-worldly pleasures. Those activities which are associated with life energy — such as eating and cohabitation — are prohibited.
On Yom Kippur, we look more like angels than people, as we wear white and wear no shoes. Yom Kippur is a simulation of death, intended to help us better appreciate life. It is a dramatic educational tool, used to remind people of the
Israel Sun
PmUB ^il^lSTER RABBN and PLO Chaimian Yasser Araf@t face the press after their meeting at Erez checkpoint \mt month.
The recent declaration by the PLO's "foreign minister," Farouk Kaddoumi, that Israel "was established by force and must be destroyed," was a blunt reaffirmation that the - PLO's goal of destroying the Jewish State
By IRVING has not changed, peace accord or no peace MOSCOWITZ accord. But Kaddoumi's speech also con-===== tained another significant component that has been widely overlooked.
"They stole our land," Kaddoumi declared. "The refugees must return to their land. This is the way of the revolution which began on its way many years ago."
Kaddoumi and his colleagues in the PLO leadership regularly assert their goal of a "return" of Arab "refugees" to Israel. According to the PLO, all Arabs who left Israel in 1948 — and all of their descendants — have a right to resettle within Israel. That would mean a flood of several million Arabs, whose sheer numbers would overwhelm the Jewish State — which of course is the PLO*s goal.
The "return of the refugees," while cloaked in humanitarian-sounding language, is simply another weapon for destroying Israel. As the late Egyptian dictator Nasser told the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung on Sept. 1, 1960: "If the refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist."
Yet the Rabin government has already opened the door to the beginning of a mass "return" to Israel by Palestinian Arabs. In a recent essay, former Knesset memBer Elyakim Ha'etzni calculated the numerical impact of Rabin's agree-
"Tti© 'rSght ©f r©tym* hm ai^ays hmn a cardlinaB prirscip^i of the PLO. It So ©sfiohrlfteci isi tSi© PLO
value of life.
Succot arrives on the heels of Yom Kippur so that no one would mistakenly think that Yom Kippur is the normative Jewish experience. Succot is a corrective, a counterweight to Yom Kippur.
In absolute contrast with Yom Kippur, Succot is the holiday that celebrates the physical. We eat in the Succah — a booth whose roof must be constructed from that which grows from the ground. We take the fruit of the land — the four species — and joyously recite blessings over them, using them as instruments through which we sing songs and praises to G-d.
With all of this, we sanctify the mundane, we elevate the physical. We compress the infmite spirit of G-d into the finite world. We elevate earth to heaven, and draw heaven down to earth. Far from a fanciful flight from the world, Succot is a sanctification of the world.
A story: A chassid living in Minsk decided to seek the heavenly world which he had been told was in Pinsk. Overnight, he slept in an open field, having carefully left his ishoes pointed in the direction of Pinsk. As he slept, a scoundrel came by and turned his shoes around.
The next morning, the Chassid continued on in the direction that he found his shoes to be pointing. When he reached his destination, he noticed landscapes, streets, homes and people that all seemed familiar. He was puzzled, but delighted to have found heavenly bliss. Heaven on earth.
This is the mission of the Ish Ha-Halacha and such is the message of Succot: to find spirituality in earthliness.
Sadly, for most Jewish North Americans, however, there is only Yom Kippur, and not Succot. Taken by itself, Yom Kippur cannot communicate the goal of Judaism. Only in context, when experienced together with Succot can we understand Yom Kippur's message properly.
If only synagogues were as full on Succot as they are on Ybm Kippur, Succot, the holiday that most reflects the Jewish spirit, deserves better.
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ISRAELI SOLDIERS "dwell In Sooths" wh®rev@i' they fflmi th@m-selves on duty during Succot. A Stscea is erected for the IDF for tfiose Wtio serve ill over Iss^ during the Feast of Booths.
ment to permit the entire PLO leadership to settle in Gaza and Jericho: - r
"The Tunis establishment — ministers, experts, security personnel, secretaries, service people — all of them with their families" will total 20,000; the PLO "police" for Gaza and Jericho adds another 9,000; the PLO "police" who will soon take over the rest of Judea and Samaria will total "perhaps 30,000, with their families swelling the [total] number to 250,000."
That's right, a quarter of a million PLO terrorists and their families will take up residence in the heart of Israel, with the full blessing of the Rabin government.
Ha'etzni was once criticized by a prominent Israeli statesman for being a "prophet of doom," but the truth is that when doom really could be just around the corner, we desperately need a few prophets to help head off the catastrophe. Ha'etzni points that the "right of return" has always been a cardinal principle of the PLO. It is enshrined in the PLO Covenant.
"Didn't Rabin symbolically shake the hands of all 1948 refugees when he welcomed Arafat, the personification of the refugees?" Ha'etzni asks. "What was Rabin thinking — that the leader of the refugees should be allowed to sail his lifeboat to the promised land, but in consideration for such a bribe he would let the whole refugee fleet go down to the bottom of the Mediterranean?"
Dr. Irving ^oslcovitz is a member of tli@ board of
Other countries seem to have a clearer understanding of the risks involved in permitting enemy "refugees" to return en masse. As Ha'etzni notes, "nobody in Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia sympathizes with the nostalgic yearning of 12 million German refugees to return to their ancient fatherland. They understand, wisely, that the return of these ethnic Germans, who caused a World War II which claimed 60 million victims, would bring another disaster. The same applies to tens of millions of former refugees in India and Pakistan, and hundreds of millions of refugees all over the world.
"Only a state in the process of liquidation would apply the 'right of return' to the leadership of a refugee community over three million. Countries with a will to survive know that such a leadership must be followed by their people or lose its position and with the Arabs it also translates into a loss of their lives."
Does Israel still have a will to survive? Or could it be, as Ha'etzni fears, that under the leadership of the present government, Israel is "in the process of (self-) liquidation?" With Farouk Kaddoumi and his colleagues pressing for a "right of return" and Yitzhak Rabin apparently in the pro-cess of granting it, there is good reason to fear for Israel's future.
It's autumn now in Israel, the worst of the summer heat has passed, and the evenings are cool and pleasant. Succot, the autumn "Feast of the Ingathering," honors the first fruits of the harvest, and recalls the sucQot, the little booths that served our ancestors throughout their desert wanderings.
On porches and in yards around the country, succot (singular succa) dot the landscape, adding eight days of color to city life. Fortuitously, the holiday also coincides with the seasonal trimming of the trees by various municipalities; consequently, palm and other branches are left in piles on the streets, available for the taking. These will form the roof and often part of the decor of the booth.
The Jews of Tunis make their succa primarily from palm and myrtle leaves, with a low arch designed to make those who enter bow in obeisance and respect. Moroccan Jews add a chair or stool by one wall, in honor of Elijah the prophet.
Ashkehazi Jews tend to make the walls of their succot from fabric, with a palm-leaved roof in order to see the star-lit sky. Succot-builders of every ethnic background make sure to add an especially colorful touch with strings of seasonal fruits, including pomegranates, fresh dates, figs and apples.
"And you shall take on the first day the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the L-rd seven days" {Leviticus 23:40). These are interpreted to refer to the lulav (palm frond) and etrog (citron) which are taken by the devout to the synagogue and kept in the succa throughout the holiday.
Traditional foods for the holiday vary according to ethnic derivation. Tunisian Jews prepare machmar stuffed eggplant in tomato and onion sauce, and a form of couscous. Ashkenazi Jews tend to mark the harvest and thanskgiving days with an abundance of fruit and vegetable dishes.
The seventh day of Succot — Hoshana Rabba — is celebrated with a special service in which a procession marches seven times around the synagogue. The Lulav is beaten, the falling leaves symbolizing the arrival of rains and the hope of renewed life. A traditional dish for this holiday is "krepi-ach", pockets of dough stuffed with meat.
On the eighth day of Succot, Shemini Atzeret, prayers for rain and remembrance of the dead ( Yiskor) are included in the service.
Then falls Simchat Torah, the rejoicing of the Torah, when the last words are read — and the first words begun again in the never-ending cycle of Judaism. wzps