What Feast of the Tabernacles?

We have arrived once again to the week-long holiday of Succot when we celebrate 40 years of wandering in the desert. As I’ve mentioned before in this space, I find it the most perplexing of Jewish holidays. I don’t know about you, but if I had been lost in the desert for all that time with no way to shower and nothing to eat but the same old manna every day, I would want to forget the experience as quickly as possible, not commemorate it.

But commemorate it we do. The main task involves building a tabernacle. When you get an instruction like this you know you’re in trouble. “Tabernacle” is a huge, substantial word for something so flimsy. Besides, some of us are, shall we say, mechanically-challenged and consideration ought to be given. Not only could I not build a tabernacle to save my life, I was the only kid in my kindergarten to flunk Tinker Toys.

Once you have the tabernacle you’re supposed to decorate it with the four species: palm, willow, myrtle and a citron. These aren’t the kinds of things you find laying around so you either have to shlep to a market to buy them at hefty prices or else raid a neighbor’s garden or national park, all of which is pretty unsavory.

Like I said, this holiday is nothing but trouble. The neighbors and Park Service wardens can rest peacefully and the emergency services can stand down: I will not build the tabernacle. In fact, I think I’ll just ignore the whole thing until it goes away. Wishing everyone a happy holiday, just please wake me when it’s over.

No Milk Today and Not Much Else

I’m so naive. After the splendidly long holiday weekend I genuinely expected to be able to shop as usual on Sunday afternoon. Wrong. I stepped into the kibbutz store only to be greeted by mostly empty shelves. I thought I had been transported back in time to the Soviet Union. There were no tomatoes, no bananas and no bread. Two people were arguing over the last bunch of grapes. And of course, there was almost no milk. There’s almost none in the whole country.

It seems that Israel’s cows have gone on strike in support of the airport workers. Or maybe it’s the other way around. In any case, you can’t fly into or out of the country and you can’t drink a glass of milk while you’re here. What the airport workers grievances are I cannot say, although I suppose they revolve around money, but the cows are said to be aggrieved by the heat.

I don’t know about you, but I’m nonplussed. Summer here is always hot. If you look up the definition of “hot” in Webster’s Dictionary you’ll see it’s defined as “summer in Israel.” This can’t come as a surprise to the cows. As far as I know, they haven’t just emigrated from Finland. But somehow August was so hot that they stopped giving milk in September. This must be bovine logic.

The thing is, it stopped being really hot and humid three weeks ago. So why is there a milk shortage now? How big a lead-time could there be? I would have expected the stuff on the shelves to be slightly fresher than that. Like I said, I’m naïve. It couldn’t possibly be that the milk monopolies are holding back the supply to raise the prices for the holidays. That would be inconceivable.