Dear TEE community,
Our ancestors clearly had a different rhythm to the year than we do. I’m sure four holidays in one month was wonderful when the harvest was in and there was leisure time until the rains came. In our day, autumn is a busy season even without Jewish observances.
There are other times in the Jewish calendar when our lives seem out of sync with practices created specifically in relationship to the Land of Israel. We often celebrate Tu b’Shevat in the snow and Passover in cold weather with few hints of spring.
After the Babylonian Exile and, later, the destruction of the Second Temple, the rabbis worked to create Jewish practices that did not depend upon living on our ancestral land. Their hope was that these would be temporary, in effect only until there was a return from exile and a rebuilding of the Temple. The founders of Reform Judaism rejected this idea. In 1885 they created a set of principles now referred to as the Pittsburgh Platform. The included the statement that:
We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.
The affirmation of diasporic Judaism took on another quality after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. The choice to live elsewhere was seen by some as a betrayal of a 2,000 year old hope to return and by others as an important assertion that Jewish life could and should flourish all over the earth.
More recently, members of the American Jewish community have begun to consider the significance of feeling part of the physical places we actually live, asking questions such as: how do we attune our Jewish practice to the seasons and cycles of North America? how do we understand ourselves as rooted in and guardians of our local environment? how do we acknowledge the indigenous peoples of our area while affirming our own connection to this land?
One specific practice that has emerged out of this conversation is the idea of Local Lulav. The originators explain:
We are a group of Jews…who came together to create diasporic lulavim, made from plants that grow in the places where we live, and that have deep meaning to us in the places we call home….We are connected and drawn to the rituals practiced by many of our ancestors and our families, and seek to find ways to create these rituals in a way that is relevant to our lives and our values. (https://jewishcurrents.org/decolonize-sukkot)
Among the concerns addressed in creating Local Lulav was the environmental impact of the large number of pesticides used in Israeli etrog production and the carbon footprint of importing lulavs from thousands of miles away. Gathering local plants also adds an important spiritual dimension, increasing our connection to the environment in which we live and understanding how Jewish wisdom is transmitting through the place in which we dwell.
I hope you will consider joining me this Friday at 5:00 pm by the Canalside Stage (“the Tent”) to gather plants and branches for our own Local Lulavs. Along the way we’ll learn about the flowers and trees that grow here and take time to notice their relationship to the traditional Jewish elements of the lulav. If you aren’t able to come at 5:00 pm, you will have a chance to assemble your own local lulav when we gather for our Sukkot celebration in the Memorial Courtyard at 6:00 pm.
For our ancestors in the Land of Israel, this was a time of waiting for the winter rains. In Rochester, we see the change of season in the beauty of the autumn leaves. Wherever we are, the sukkah teaches us that the earth is our true home.
Rabbi Drorah Setel