This is the oddest holiday in the Jewish calendar. I thought this as I sat in a succa looking at the stars through the palm fronds. Succot, of course, has just ended. I had a nice time, sitting in some friends' succa with a few other people from the kibbutz, eating, drinking and talking about nothing special.
Still, the holiday is odd. It's another of those marathon holidays, the kind that test your endurance until the timer runs out. Christians don't have these, unless you count Lent which is a Catholic invention. We're supposed to build these huts out of nothing substantial, decorate them with species of the plant kingdom, and sleep or at least eat in them for a week. I have a problem with this from the get-go.
I'm not a builder. As a kid, Lincoln Logs were a mystery to me. As an adult, Ikea fills me with fear and trembling and is pretty much out of the question. So no hut will be built. But if I had a hut I wouldn't want to decorate it with fruits and greenery that have to be perfect to be acceptable. This is simply insulting and if I were a vegetable I would howl in protest. Wildly imperfect human beings demanding plant perfection – it's laughable. Perfection is not for this world, certainly not for anything that lives.
By now all the huts have been taken down and thrown on the compost pile. Succot is over and there are no more holidays until the next marathon one in December. Hanukkah at least features jelly donuts.
No comments:
Post a Comment