An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man prepares his sukkah (hut) during the celebration of Sukkot, the Feast of the Tabernacles, in an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood of Meah Shearim, Jerusalem, Israel, 30 September 2012. The Sukkot feast begins tonight at sunset and commemorates the exodus of Jews from Egypt some 3,200 years ago. VIN.
Happy Sukkot from VB and Scary Jew Shadow!
Apple strudel!
Blueberry Pie!
Actually the recipes used for the studel and pie shown above came from Rose Levy Berenbaum's Pie and Pastry Bible.
An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man carries palm branches to be used for the celebration of Sukkot, the Feast of the Tabernacles, in an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Bnei Brak on October 11, 2011. The Sukkot feast begins on October 13 and commemorates the exodus of Jews from Egypt some 3200 years ago. Getty Images.
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men check an etrog, a citrus fruit, for blemishes at a market in Jerusalem's Mea Shearim neighbourhood October 9, 2011. The citrus fruit is used in rituals during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which begins at sundown Wednesday. Reuters.
And here are some Scary Samaritans:
Members of the Samaritan community take part in a traditional pilgrimage marking the holiday of Sukkot or Feast of Tabernacles atop Mount Gerizim near the West Bank city of Nablus early October 11, 2011. The Samaritans trace their ancestry to the northern Israelite kingdom that was destroyed by the Assyrians in around 720 BCE. Their faith shares many similarities with Judaism. Reuters.
Samaritans are kind of interesting historically. The Samaritans (called "Cutheans" in the Talmud) are descendants of non-Jewish tribes who were brought into the Kingdom of Israel after the Israelites were defeated and exiled by the Assyrians. They accepted a form of the Hebrew religion taught to them by a very small remnant of the Ten Tribes who remained, but they combined it with their previous idolatrous religion. The Samaritans and the Jews have not been very friendly to one another throughout history.
INDIO, Calif. — From a certain vantage point on Arthur Futterman’s date farm, Shulem Ekstein can see palm trees in every direction. Mr. Ekstein has been to many of these farms, waiting at the gate in his black three-piece suit, his prayer shawl poking out from underneath his vest.
For each of the last seven years, Mr. Ekstein has traveled from Kiryas Joel, a tightly knit Orthodox enclave northwest of New York City, to ask the farmers in the California desert if he could please buy the inner palm fronds of their trees. Thousands of Jews, he will explain, will soon be looking to use those sort of fronds as a religious ritual object to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot.
“I explain to them it doesn’t hurt the trees, it helps them,” said Mr. Ekstein, 27, his voice thick with a Yiddish accent, as he reached through a tree to clip one out. “It just takes a minute or less to cut them, not complicated.”
During the holiday, which begins next Wednesday evening and lasts for a week, religious Jews are required to hold the frond — called a lulav in Hebrew — along with a willow and myrtle branches and a citron fruit each day while reciting a prayer.
The palms are most abundant in the Middle East — the vast majority of the roughly 500,000 used in the United States are imported from Israel and Egypt. But this year, Egypt has apparently held back from exporting the fronds, sending a wave of panic about a potential lulav shortage through the small circle of businessmen who distribute and sell them in the United States.
“We rely way too much on other countries,” said Levi Zagelbaum, who distributes them from Brooklyn all over the country. “We shouldn’t allow this to happen again. But people have to understand that was our cheapest source.”
The lulav industry, such as it is, relies primarily on longstanding connections, with the largest suppliers closely guarding their source of the palm fronds. Mr. Zagelbaum said consumers would have to pay $10 more this year for the palm fronds, which are typically sold with the other symbolic plants for anywhere from $50 to $300.
Mr. Ekstein does not worry about any of that. Thanks to the farmers here, he has his own small but steady supply of American-grown palm fronds. A member of the ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic sect, which believes the state of Israel should be created only by God, Mr. Ekstein does not buy religious items from Israel. The fronds from Egypt, he said, are inferior to the varieties he can procure here. In his community, nobody will blanch at paying $70 or $80 for the palm frond alone.
“We want the strongest, the most beautiful, the straightest,” he said. “Everyone wants the nicest ones, but most people have no idea where theirs came from. We know.”
An Egyptian decision to ban the export of closed palm fronds used in an upcoming Jewish festival is forcing Israel to seek ways to make up the shortfall, its agriculture minister said on Sunday.
In the past, Israeli dealers imported between 600,000 and 700,000 fronds, the vast majority of which came from Egypt's Sinai region.
The closed fronds of the date palm are used by Jews during the holiday of Sukkot -- the Feast of Tabernacles -- which begins on October 12 and lasts for seven days.
Following the Egyptian ban, the agriculture ministry "is encouraging local palm farmers to significantly increase the amount of fronds they will supply for the holiday," a statement from Agriculture Minister Orit Noked said.
Relations between Egypt and Israel, which have been bound by a peace treaty since 1979, entered a period of turbulence after the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak by a popular uprising in February.
The Israeli embassy in Cairo was ransacked last weekend, forcing the evacuation of staff and the departure of the ambassador.
Egypt's envoy to Israel was summoned to the Israeli foreign ministry after Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf was quoted by official news agency MENA as saying that the peace treaty between the two states was "not sacred."
The Egyptian agriculture ministry gave no reason for its worldwide ban on frond exports, Israeli officials said.
They said it was not yet known whether Israeli farmers, who normally provide 200,000 fronds for the holiday, would be able to sufficiently boost production.
Licences to import the fronds from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and even Spain have been issued by the agriculture ministry.
Traders in Israel do booming business in the days leading to Sukkot, selling palm fronds.
Read more at AFP.
Spectacular FAIL. Now what are they Egyptians going to do with a bunch of lulavim?
“Biblical in origin, the sukkah is an ephemeral, elemental shelter, erected for one week each fall, in which it is customary to share meals, entertain, sleep, and rejoice.
Ostensibly the sukkah's religious function is to commemorate the temporary structures that the Israelites dwelled in during their exodus from Egypt, but it is also about universal ideas of transience and permanence as expressed in architecture. The sukkah is a means of ceremonially practicing homelessness, while at the same time remaining deeply rooted. It calls on us to acknowledge the changing of the seasons, to reconnect with an agricultural past, and to take a moment to dwell on--and dwell in--impermanence.
Historically, the sukkah's permanent recurrence is not as a monument, archetype, or typology, but as a set of precise parameters. The basic constraints seem simple: the structure must be temporary, have at least two and a half walls, be big enough to contain a table, and have a roof made of shade-providing organic materials through which one can see the stars.
Yet a deep dialogue of historical texts intricately refines and interprets these constraints--arguing, for example, for a 27 x 27 x 38-inch minimum volume; for a maximum height of 30 feet; for walls that cannot sway more than one handbreadth; for a mineral and botanical menagerie of construction materials; and even, in one famous instance, whether it is kosher to adaptively reuse a recently deceased elephant as a wall. (It is.) The paradoxical effect of these constraints is to produce a building that is at once new and old, timely and timeless, mobile and stable, open and enclosed, homey and uncanny, comfortable and critical.” -- Sukkah City
The shortlist of the Sukkah City Competition has just been announced, and in the next week, twelve structures will be built in Union Square Park in New York City, and subjected to a public vote. The competition invites architects to design a small structure based on the "parametric rules" of a traditional Jewish structure built for the harvest. Initiated by Joshua Foer, the competition is a daring initiative, particularly in a time when the locating of faith structures in New York City is under debate.
Read more at Archinect.com.
I am not sure how many of these structures are actually kosher according to the halachic requirements of a sukkah, and even those that are, do not look as though they would be very comfortable to enjoy a holiday meal.
But nevertheless it is an interesting exhibit. Enjoy.
Covered in prayer shawls, ultra-orthodox Jewish men of the Cohanim Priestly caste participate in a blessing during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, in front of the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, in Jerusalem's Old City, Monday, Oct. 5, 2009. The Cohanim, believed to be descendants of priests who served God in the Jewish Temple before it was destroyed, perform a blessing ceremony of the Jewish people three times a year during the festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. AP Photo.
Thousands of Jewish worshippers flock to Jerusalem for Sukkot blessing, as hundreds of police officers stand guard in order to prevent possible clashes between Jews, Muslims. Earlier, police dispersed some 150 Arab worshippers after they refused to leave
Despite tensions in Jerusalem's Old City, some 30,000 worshippers arrived at the Western Wall on Monday to attend the traditional Sukkot Priestly Blessing.
Following recent violent events in the area, police were on high alert and many officers were deployed throughout the allies of the Old City leading up to the Western Wall, in an attempt to prevent any conflict.
Two incidents were already recorded Monday morning: Stones were thrown at dozens of haredim praying at the Mount of Olives. Police and Border Guard officers were able to disperse the riots without using force.
At the Ras al-Amud circle in east Jerusalem stones were thrown at police and Border Guard officers, and the rioters were dispersed. There were no reports of damage or injury in both cases.
Earlier, some 150 young Arab worshippers prayed near the Old City, and refused to leave once prayer was over.
However, police were able to disperse them without having to use any force, and were able to significantly limit the number of Muslim worshippers entering the Temple Mount compound.
Read more at YNet.
Sukkot in Mea Shearim. AP Photo.
In an unusual move, the US State Department on Friday called on American citizens to avoid Jerusalem's Old City during the week of Succot, warning citizens of increased violence, crime and heavy traffic.
"Although it is a good idea to avoid the Old City for the entire week," the warning read, stressing that "Monday, October 5, is expected to draw the largest crowds due to the annual pilgrimage by Jewish worshipers who will assemble at the Western Wall for special prayers."
The State Department explained that "Political and religious tensions are expected to be high in the areas immediately adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound throughout this period.
"A large police presence in the area may provoke spontaneous violence in the form of civil unrest and police actions," the statement, which was published on the State Department's Web site, continued.
In the warning, US citizens were also informed that "vehicle traffic in and around the Old City will be restricted by the Israeli National Police."
Finally, Americans were warned that "the crowded environment could result in an uptick in criminal activity to include pickpockets, physical assaults and other crimes."
Crowds and walking or driving around the Old City should be avoided, the statement concluded.
JERUSALEM - OCTOBER 01: Ultra-Orthodox Jews walk between the Sukkahs (tabernacles or booths) which fill a courtyard in the religious Mea Shearim neighbourhood and which will be used during the upcoming festival of Sukkot, on October 1, 2009, in Jerusalem, Israel. The eight-day Jewish Feast of the Tabernacles, which begins tomorrow evening October 2, 2009, commemorates the biblical Hebrews' 40 years of wandering in the desert after the exodus from Egypt some 3,200 years ago. Getty Images.
Meanwhile in Gaza, the Pity Party continues:
A Palestinian boy rides a donkey houses that were destroyed in January's Israeli military offensive, in Jebalia in the northern Gaza Strip, on October 1, 2009. Israel warned that the UN Human Rights Council would strike a fatal blow to the stalled Middle East peace process if it passes its damning Gaza war report on to the Security Council. Getty Images.
The sages say in the Talmud, (Avodah Zara 3a) that in the future world, the Holy One, Blessed Be He, will chide the gentile nations for not accepting the Torah when they were offered it. They will say, 'Give us the Torah again, and we will accept it.' G-D will then give them the mitzvah of Sukkah, which is cheap and easy. Immediately, every gentile will go out and build a sukkah [in Gaza they can just throw some branches on the shacks they are always showing to the media--VB]. But when the sun beats down on them at midday, each one will abandon the sukkah and kick it over as he leaves.
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