Velveteen Rabbi

Sukkot harvest

Etrog slices.

One of the ways I mark the end of Sukkot is by preserving etrogim. They're such precious and beautiful fruits (especially their fragrance -- the scent is intense and unmistakeable) that throwing them away seems ridiculous. Better to make something of them; better still to make something which will allow me to savor another festival more fully. So the last few years I've preserved our etrogim to eat at Tu BiShvat, the New Year of the Trees which comes on the Gregorian calendar sometime in February.

As always, at this time of year the hills where we live have shifted into their short-lived but spectacular orange and yellow and red clothes. The icy snows of February are almost inconceivable. But I love knowing that on some cold winter day, when the hope for spring is fierce but the days of increasing light still feel far away, we'll open these jars and their contents will remind me of sitting in our sukkah this fall.

One of my favorite food/cooking resources, On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, tells me:

Perhaps the first citrus fruit to reach the Middle East around 700 B.C.E. and the Mediterranean around 300 B.C.E., citrons are native to the Himalayan foothills. They gave their name to the genus, and their name came in turn from their resemblance to the cone of a Mediterranean evergreen cedar (Greek kedros.) The several varieties have little juice, but an intensely aromatic rind that can perfume a room -- citrons are used in both Asian and Jewish religious ceremonies -- and that has long been candied.

McGee says that in China's Sichuan province, the rind is made into a hot pickle. (Anybody have a recipe for that? It sounds amazing.) Experimenting with the genre is tough; last year's attempted spicy etrog pickle wasn't really a success. (Now that I've preserved lemons -- which I did during the month of Elul, wanting to serve a dish which required them on erev Rosh Hashanah -- I understand why etrogim don't work in the same way: they're too much pith, too little fruit, and there just wasn't enough juice to marinate them in.) So I decided to reprise the etrog-ginger marmalade I made in 2007, with a few tweaks.

Resting overnight.

Adonai, open my lips...

I recently encountered a beautiful teaching by the Sefat Emet (Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger; I've blogged his teachings many times before.) This is one of his teachings for Hoshanna Rabbah (the seventh day of Sukkot) and can be found in The Language of Truth. It's about prayer.

On Hoshanna Rabbah we beat willow branches against the ground. The willow, he says, represents speech, which connects it with prayer (prayer being, after all, a form of speech.) The willow is also associated with David, the psalmist, who said "I am my prayer before You."

Prayer is all we have for reaching God. In some sense that may seem either inadequate or chutzpahdik. On the other hand, prayer is all we need for reaching God. The leaves of the willow are shaped like lips, and our lips are the gates through which our prayers pass.

At the end of Yom Kippur we make much of how "the gates are closing." We seem to need the catharsis and the drama of dipping deep into the experience of that day as though, when that day ends, our chance to reach God were over. Though the tradition also says that the gates of repentance remain open through Hoshanna Rabbah (some say, through Shemini Atzeret, the 8th day of Sukkot)... and really, says the Sefat Emet, the gates to God are always open as long as we use our lips to pray.

Our mouths are the gates. When they are closed -- when we perceive that God is far from us -- that's because we've closed the gates ourselves. That's the heartbreaking news: our experience of God as being distant from us is our own doing! But the good news is, opening the gates is always within our power. All we have to do is open our lips.

Joy

What does it mean to be commanded to be joyful?

The festival of Sukkot is called zman simchateinu, the season of our rejoicing. It's a mitzvah -- a connective-commandment, a religious obligation -- to rejoice in our sukkot. This mitzvah is d'oraita (comes from the Torah itself, rather than from later rabbinic tradition): Deuteronomy 16:15 says, "you shall be altogether joyful." But what can this mean? Surely it isn't possible to legislate an inner state of being. For me, the critical distinction is between the English words "joy" and "happiness."

Happiness comes and goes. We may have a sense for what conditions are likeliest to bring it about, but I'm not sure we can entirely trust that sense. (Haven't you known people who pursued things they thought would make them happy, but discovered that what they were seeking wasn't actually enough?) And besides, the conditions aren't usually within our control. I may perceive that I'm happiest when I'm surrounded by people I love, eating great food, experiencing wonderful live music, traveling to exciting new places, immersing in an amazing experience of prayer -- but even though I'm fortunate to have a lot of those moments in my life, life isn't like that all the time. I can't count on that experience to sustain me. (For a different -- but not unrelated -- perspective on happiness, you might enjoy Daniel Gilbert on why it’s so hard to know what makes us happy, over at Ethan's blog.)

It seems to me that joy is something different. Joy can be cultivated. And joy can coexist with sorrow.

Turn, turn, turn

Friday evening I got a message that the rabbi was unwell; could I lead services on Saturday morning? Of course, I said. He emailed me the creative Hallel handout he'd assembled, told me which Torah scroll in the ark is set to the reading for the first day of Sukkot, thanked me, and went to bed. That changed the shape of Friday evening a bit. I sat down with my Mishkan Tfilah Weekdays & Festivals edition to look over the festival morning service, and then took out my tikkun to learn the Torah reading, and printed out the guitar tablature for the "song of the week" that had been chosen -- Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn," because the megillah associated with Sukkot is Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) from which most of those lyrics are drawn. The service was a lot of fun; we had a minyan, I played guitar for a couple of the songs in Hallel, and afterwards we studied excerpts from Kohelet and talked about why this megillah might have been chosen to be paired with this festival, themes of striving and impermanence, work and harvest.

Shabbat afternoon was fogged-in and rainy -- no weather for sitting outside in the sukkah, alas. Instead, a good friend and I turned what we estimated to be the proverbial bushel and peck of apples (of many local varieties: Red Lady, Macoun, Honeycrisp, others of unidentifiable provenance) into enough applesauce to grace our Chanukah  latkes, feed my son next spring when he's starting on baby food, and still give both of our households enough applesauce to enjoy and to give away this winter. It was a profoundly satisfying way to spend the day. I enjoy the rhythm of the work. My fingers gravitate toward the Shaker apple corer/slicer and the food mill, both of which turn, turn, turn. I savor the scent of apples cooking with just a splash of water and several long dashes of cinnamon. And I love watching the jars pile up beside the canner, and hearing the popping sounds of their lids sealing this harvest goodness for the seasons to come.

Today dawned with fog but no rain, and soon the sun burned the fog away, though in the valley below us it rested like low-flying clouds all morning. Ethan's taking advantage of the sun to do some much-needed roofing repair work (it's kind of funny that during this season when we inhabit sukkot and remember the impermanence of our dwelling-places, he's quite literally facing the impermanence of ours!) but I'm not much help with that, so I went out to the sukkah instead. To my great pleasure, the rains of earlier in the weekend dampened everything but didn't knock the schach off of the roof! So I went inside and shook my lulav in all six directions, beckoning blessings. I sang some psalms quietly to myself. And then I sat down and called my folks, bringing them into the sukkah through their voices in my ear. I wonder what our son will make of our little round sukkah, of being outdoors and indoors all at once, next time the wheel of the year rolls around.

Permeable: a poem for Sukkot

PERMEABLE

Today I'll finish our sukkah
stacking old wildflowers
to hint at roof, twining tinsel
around the slats

all year we imagine
our houses are our houses
stable and comfortable
waterproof and familiar

but these seven days
remind us that permanence
is overrated, that our true home
is under the stars

change is always underway
nine short weeks remain
until you'll leave the home
you probably think is forever

and enter our world
airy and unpredictable
where we won't know what you need
even sometimes when you tell us

your first big leap of faith, kid:
into nothing you've ever known
into the fragile sukkah
we've decorated just for you

---

Tonight at sundown begins the festival of Sukkot, when we spend a week "dwelling" (or at least hanging out and dining) in little outdoor houses. A sukkah must be permeable to the elements; one should be able to see the full moon through the loose branches of its roof. It's a celebration of the harvest (in this hemisphere) and a chance to remind ourselves that even the solid structures we build aren't as permanent as the fact of change.

Nothing hammers home that truth for me as vividly as my swelling belly, the squirms and kicks I've grown accustomed to feeling inside me, the hand-me-down baby gear accumulating in the nursery. So this week's poem -- not a Torah poem; just a poem-poem -- draws both on the Jewish holiday/seasonal cycle, and on the cycle of this embodied year and the changes in my life which are physically underway.

To those who celebrate, I wish a chag sameach -- may your Sukkot be joyful!

(To ReadWritePoem folks: alas, once again I didn't write to this week's prompt, but if you'd like to read the other responses, you can find them here: Get Your Poem On #94.)

[permeable.mp3]

---

Find previous Sukkot posts here.

Continuing adventures in etrog preservation

Despite this toxic etrog warning at The Jew and the Carrot, I wanted to make something out of my etrogim again this year. They're so beautiful and fragrant that I couldn't bear to just throw them away. So nu, it's possible that our etrogim are pesticide-laden; I still couldn't resist. Besides, whatever I make was likely to be a condiment, something we'll eat in small bites. I decided it was worth the risk.

Last year I made etrog-ginger marmalade, which was tasty although flawed; it's somewhat bitter, and also denser than I really wanted. (I was afraid of winding up with fruit sauce again, so I cooked it for too long. Whoops.) In some ways my most successful etrog preservation to date was the spicy blueberry-etrog jam I made two years ago, which was delicious. But maybe because the blueberries provide the dominant color and flavor notes, it was slightly dissatisfying as a mode of etrog preservation. It felt like I was putting the fruits to good use, but the end result didn't feel like etrog.

Still, the combination of sweet and spicy made me happy, so this year I decided to try something wacky and new: a sweet and spicy etrog pickle.

Sukkahfest 5769

Back when I was in Jerusalem this summer, I decided that I was going to give myself the gift of attending Sukkahfest at Isabella Freedman come autumn. It would be my reward for making it through the Yamim Nora'im (Days of Awe): after my first Yom Kippur pulpit, I would get three days of being able to relax into davening and learning and connecting with people during the festival known as zman simchateinu, the time of our joy. I've just returned from that adventure.

On the first night, there were songs and storytelling in the sukkah until late, and then I sat and listened to a man who was giving over teachings about the custom of inviting ushpizin, holy guests, into the sukkah. (The first night, it's traditional to invite Abraham; in Hasidic communities it's customary to invite the spirit of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism.) The man told a beautiful teaching from the BeShT about how the whole world is on fire -- which one could see as a sign of chaos, but the Baal Shem saw it as a sign of how everything that lives burns for God.

Marmalade

Before Sukkot began, I was at shul to meet with my rabbi, and happened to see the etrogim he'd purchased, sitting on a table. Our shul ordered three this year. I asked whether anyone had any intention of preserving them when the festival had ended, and sure enough, no one did. So when I was back at shul for Hebrew school on Simchat Torah, I took away the etrogim. In previous years I've only had the one etrog to play with. This year, since I would have four at my disposal, I decided it was time to try making etrog marmalade again.

The inside of an etrog is quite beautiful, but there's a lot of pith. (This one actually has more fruit and less pith than some of the others I sliced into; some of them seem to be mostly pith, with just a little starburst of fruit in the center.) Before the marmalade-making began, I read every citrus marmalade recipe I could get my hands on. Several suggested using fruit and rind but eschewing the pith, since pith may impart a bitter flavor to the jam. Of course, pith -- and seeds -- also contain natural pectins, and the first time I tried making this stuff my marmalade didn't set, so I wasn't sure I wanted to leave out anything that might help with that process. Besides, if I cut away all of the pith I would hardly have had any fruit left.

Falling leaves

Today is the seventh day of Sukkot, also known as Hoshana Rabbah. I wrote a post about Hoshanah Rabbah last year, complete with an extemporaneous prayer for rain. This year I'm feeling a little bit disconnected, spiritually wiped-out from the long span of holiday consciousness that started with the new moon of Elul seven weeks ago. Maybe because I'm hovering on the edge of a new semester I feel distracted, not entirely here. I'm too busy anticipating what's coming to feel rooted in what's happening now.

My solution? I return to the sukkah with my laptop. I'll work from out here for a while. It's the last day of the festival, after all. This weekend I'll beat the rugs that have been living out here all week, and drape them over the railings of the deck to air out before being folded and stowed in the garage. (We'll use them at midwinter, to line our ger.) I'll untwine the autumnal tinsel garland and coil it for next year. But for now, I can sit outside, listening to the constant pulse of crickets singing and to the rattle of warm wind in the trees. I can take the time to notice how it feels to be sitting in this open-air house, inside and outside at the same time.

I watch leaves falling, spiraling lazily from the still-mostly-green forest overhead, and I think about the leaves of the aravot, the willow branches we beat against the ground today. The practice renders our lulavim unfit for future use, preventing ourselves from holding on to this festival too long. I can't come out here and bentsch lulav next week, because it won't be time for that any more. "To everything there is a season," as Kohelet has it -- Kohelet, the megillah we read during Sukkot. (I can't seem to help adding the Byrds' "Turn, turn, turn.") The autumn equinox has passed. The angle of the earth is turning.

Tonight, at my synagogue's Simchat Torah celebration, we'll do a different kind of turning -- from the end of the Torah to its beginning. "Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it." The planet turns, the cycle of the seasons turn, and our central story turns. Endings are always also beginnings. Dismantling the sukkah will be the first step toward putting it back together again next year. But for now, it's time to accept that the leaves are falling. I knock my aravah against the table and watch its leaves flutter to the ground.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, HoshanaRabbah.

Shelter and peace

Maariv -- evening prayer -- is short and sweet. Especially on weekdays, maariv often has a contemplative flavor. Often maariv is a little wistful. Day is winding down. Whatever we'd hoped to accomplish today, either we've done it or we haven't, but the gates of the day are closing.

I spent most of my day in the sukkah: davened shacharit here, hung out for part of the afternoon, returned after a walk past the beaver dam. As twilight began to turn into evening I ran back inside to grab my siddur, and davened maariv here. (Just in time, too; by the time I made it into the amidah it was growing difficult to see the letters on the page, so I took that as an opportunity for personal prayer on the general themes of the written text I could no longer make out.)

I write this from my chair in the sukkah, dimming the light of my computer screen so it doesn't drown out the subtle colors of the sky, which is a deepening blue overhead and tinged with pink at one edge of the horizon. Already the stalks of goldenrod and branches of sumac with which I roofed the sukkah have lost all definition; they're black silhouettes against the dusky eggshell of the sky.

During evening prayer there's an extra blessing added -- extra because it doesn't appear in morning or afternoon prayer -- which asks God to shelter us through the coming night. We pray ופרוש עלינו סכת שלומך, ufros aleinu sukkat shlomecha, "spread over us the sukkah of Your peace."

Of course, a sukkah is by definition permeable. The safety and comfort we seek as night begins isn't the comfort of armored gates and locked-down windows. This is a peace that's open to the changing sky, and to the sounds of crickets and cicadas playing their end-of-summer tune. A peace that knows the heady scent of new-mown grass, and the spiciness of woodsmoke.

The word שלום (shalom) comes from a root which means wholeness, completeness. What we're asking for in this prayer is to be made whole, to find our whole selves sheltered by the Infinite. This shelter is real, but it's permeable. Our wholeness is possible only when we embrace fragility. It's a paradox: protection comes when we embrace humility, not strength. The way to be safe is to open our hearts.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, maariv.