Sukkot at Beth Tikvah

     When I was a child, I wanted my family to have a sukkah in the backyard.  I never wanted a Christmas tree, I wanted a sukkah to decorate.  I saw other families in my neighborhood had them and they looked like so much fun.  My parents saw them as symbols of old-fashioned orthodoxy.  They didn't think sukkahs, along with most religious traditional trappings, were necessary.  We knew we were Jewish, we lived in a Jewish neighborhood, listened to Jewish music, and ate Jewish food, therefore, we were Jewish and that was all that mattered.  For me though, it wasn't enough, and I wanted a sukkah.  I didn't get one until I was an adult.  When my children were younger, we would put up a sukkah on the back deck, and make paper chains that could be wrapped around it twice.  Then my husband would re-purpose the sukkah for Halloween into a haunted house.  While the sukkah was fun, it seemed to be missing something, family and friends.  My plan had always been to actually eat in our sukkah, but the weather never seemed cooperate, a trend that you will see continued into this year.

Rabbi Mike explains the holiday while we eat

     After a few years, we stopped putting up our own sukkah, instead, we enjoy the Beth Tikvah Synagogue sukkah.  Every year, David Eagle and his crew put up and take down the sukkah for Beth Tikvah.  For the last few years, Jon Nourse of Nourse farms donates the cornstalks for the s'chach and this year Judy Narod donated grape vines.

Yom Yippur Reflections

When I was a teenager, in the way of teenagers, I wanted to be seen as an adult.  Now as a Jewish teen, I believed I had a leg up on the whole being treated like an adult thing because after all, I was an adult by Jewish law.  And what was the best way to prove that I was ready for my Jewish adult, and therefore all adult, responsibilities and privileges, fast on Yom Kippur.  This might shock some of you who know me, but I was a bit of a type A personality, and tended to attempt to follow the rules fairly strictly.  So there we were on Yom Kippur, my parents, my siblings, grandparents, and assorted other relatives, waiting to eat at the end of Yom Kippur.  And there I was, calmly informing my family that we couldn't eat because it wasn't late enough.  They asked me, what time could we eat, and I responded - when there were 3 stars in the sky. They did their best to humor me and wait, just one little problem - I lived in NYC, good luck finding 3 stars in the sky.  I was so excited to fast back then.  Now, I find myself marking my annual calendar by the High Holidays the way some people mark the year by a birthday, first day of school, or January 1.  Only now it's more like, 6 more months till I have to fast, 3 more months till I have to fast, 1 more week, etc.  At the beginning of summer I'm not worrying about summer being too short because winter is coming, no, I'm thinking, summer's too short, at the end of summer it is time to fast.  At the end of this year's fast my first thought was bonus, it's a leap year - 13 months before Yom Kippur.  Truthfully though, this year's fast was