Protection against the Elements: Jewish holiday of Sukkot vs. Urban Outfitters catalog

Coming out of the first, intense days of the 8-day Jewish holiday of Sukkot, known to most as the Festival of Booths, or Tabernacles (whatever those are), I glanced through the mail to find a catalog for Urban Outfitters, a clothes vendor whose styles I used to like.

In our holiday, Jews consume all our meals in an outdoor home-made temporary structure covered by non-growing vegetation, in our case cedar boughs cut from our forest-y back yard.  It was quite chilly and damp (though not raining, at least) for our gatherings, and our children, who returned from their studies in New York and Los Angeles as well as locally, shivered in their parkas, and snuggled in blankets around our table.  We drank steaming soup and continued through festive meals with friends, celebrating the "time of our rejoicing," a yearly harvest commemoration that emphasizes that all our dwellings--no
matter how fortified--are merely transitory and flimsy given the power of God.

It's true that by comparison with the heavy-duty messages of the season--increasing darkness, decay and cold reminding of our dependence--the styles in the Urban Outfitters catalog seem insignificant and inconsequential.  But the artsy, mountain-themed catalog, set in mossy glens, dense forests, and rural waterways among majestic peaks, (as well as the usual grubby alleys you'd expect from a company with "urban" in its name) was striking in its appreciation of rugged nature.

Lovely backdrops, silly, overpriced merchandise.  The style is to have nothing match, nothing you'd predict should be worn with anything else.  A long peach chiffon skirt with a bulky purple variegated mohair sweater and wood-grained platform heels where the platform's about four inches tall; the heel about eight.  A waif seated on a car trunk near a sylvan hillside wearing a gold cropped dolman-sleeved sweater, black and mauve wildly-printed jeggings, leopard platform lace-up heel-boots...and a blue dunce cap. Same doe-eyed girl standing on a verdant trail, in a see-through lace body suit, glimpse of a serape-stripe shirt beneath a denim, sweater-sleeved jacket. She's outdoors for this "late fall 2011" catalog pose, sans clothing on her lower half.  A two-page spread showing two young ladies on a large, ferry-like boat in an overcast lake (or perhaps Puget Sound), wearing mini-miniskirts, one so short it barely covers the essentials, above platform laced hiking boots.

The good news is that my daughter should no longer chide me for wearing socks with loafers; here it is in the Urban Outfitters catalog!  I don't pair this with miniskirts, however, which might demote me, fashion-wise.  I do feel liberated; floaty tops with weighty jackets and scruffy t-shirts!  Long skirts are back!  Could this mean I can take my slim-cut "mom jeans" out of the closet?  Hope so; I'm wearing them right now, though with a shirt long enough to cover the unsightly too-high pockets that cause my daughter to wince.

Hooray for capitalism; hooray for businesses who can make a profit based on customer response to pink-haired models with matching bags on cracked sidewalks, and close-ups of ingenues with white rats perched on their heads (both in this catalog)! I hope Urban Outfitters succeeds, because our economy benefits whenever a retailer prospers.

But the juxtaposition between the seriousness of a holiday that proves us vulnerable to the elements, and the positioning of models so unnaturally-clad in untamed nature is worth highlighting.  Every day, traditional Jews in their morning prayers thank God for "clothing the naked," our voluntary means of protection against cold and discomfort.  Humans in their nakedness don't have the innate insulation of fur or feather.  Rather, we're given the opportunity to choose how we are covered; we can observe our world and note the most appropriate garb, and beyond that use our creative abilities to fashion it.

For our wardrobes and the shelter of our homes and even Sukkot huts, we should be conscious and grateful.  Now, as the days grow shorter, we shouldn't take for granted our cozy clothes of whatever design, or the warming of hot chocolate by an indoor fireplace.

Post-script, as of Tuesday, Oct. 18:
Lovin' it: An Associated Press story today describes the umbrage of the Navajo (native-American) Nation at Urban Outfitters' usurping their trademarked name for a line of clothing including the "Navajo Hipster Panty" and a "Navajo" flask the article deemed "extremely insensitive." Outfitters' spokesman Ed Looram demurs, noting the name and Indian styles "have been cycling through fashion, fine art and design for the last few years." Members of other tribes share the Navajo's ire: Santee Sioux Nation member Sasha Houston Brown said Outfitters "trivialized and sexualized" the tribe's "life ways...for the sake of corporate profit."

I'm always fascinated by the passion about fashion.  I know, I know, we're talking minority-group pride versus corporate profits.  It's never about allegiance to a look or trend; it's about who's willing to pay how much for something to discard next year.  It's all ephemeral--which, as I think about it, dovetails nicely with the Sukkot message of the book we read this time of year, Kohellet (Ecclesiastes).  There's nothing new under the sun...even futility.  As one who wears my daughters' hand-me-ups from many years ago, (and who accepts my husband's famous shredded-and-ancient look), I really don't get the big money and seriousness generated by this industry.

Sukkot: If it's in Downtown Manhattan...it must be famous, right?

For the last time this Jewish holiday season, we're about to duck into a three-day time warp. And into something that in ideal times to come will be the skin of the Leviathan.

Since becoming Jewishly observant, I've always thought of the holiday of Sukkot (often spelled Succot, since any spelling in English is just a phonetic rendering of the Hebrew) as a reminder never to say other religions are weird.  Because many of the rituals associated with this 8-day holiday would strike anyone as...odd.

Strangest of all, perhaps, is the lulav and etrog, in themselves curious words that sound like characters out of Star Wars.  The lulav is really a closed palm frond, but it's also shorthand for the frond combined with small branches of myrtle and willow, usually in a woven raffia holder. They're three of the "arba minim," Hebrew for "four species," the fourth being the etrog, a lemonesque bumpy citron fruit.  The sweet international hit Israeli film "Ushpizin" spends a lot of screen-time on the competitive search and bidding each year among the pious for the most "perfect" fruit according to standards of beauty honored for centuries.

During the span of the holiday, Jews do things while holding the lulav and etrog that others might consider quaint.  Every day while facing east, we say a blessing and shake them in all six directions (including up and down). In synagogue, men parade in a circle with the Torah scrolls, holding their arba minim, reciting verses and asking God to "hosha na" (save, please).  These "hoshanas" were basically what followers of Jesus were doing with their palm fronds when he rode on his donkey to Jerusalem just prior to the crucifixion.

At the end of Sukkot, Jews in synagogue beat their bundles of willow rather fiercely, five times on the ground in the "grand" hoshanas (Hoshana Rabba). There's lots of commentary about the significance of the items and actions--harvest, life and death allusions; replication of ancient Temple rituals; the coming together of all types of Jews; reference to future Messianic times--but, bottom line, these are peculiar, but we do what God told us to do.

If you can select, wave, parade and bash a collection of fruit and herbs, you really must want to please God.  That these activities are increasingly popular among American Jews offers an encouraging message; my Google search of "lulav and etrog" yielded 43,300 results, mostly outlets for buying and instructions for using them.

Then, there's the succa (also spelled "sukkah"), the holiday's namesake.  Jews build not-so-watertight shelters in their backyards, according to very explicit rules.  The key is that the "roof" must be of once-living organic material--at our house, fir boughs freshly cut from backyard trees.  When we lived in LA, our topping, which has the throat-tickling name "skakh," was 20-foot palm fronds, also from our yard.  Those with limited greenery access, no time, or laziness often use bamboo mats; as long as it was once growing and unadulterated, it works--but it must be applied loosely, so the sun and moon can shine through.

Throughout the holiday Jews move into the succa, at least figuratively, eating, spending maximum time, and, if possible, sleeping there. It's preferable to beautify the succa and use one's finest tableware to really internalize and honor the occasion.  There's lots of symbolism--dependence on God; withdrawal from materialism; remembrance of the "clouds of glory" that surrounded the Jews wandering in the wilderness after the exodus; harvest, with its seasonal conclusions; and a hearkening to Messianic times, when it's said all will sit in harmony in a giant succa made from the skin of the Leviathan (whatever that is).

Now, constructing all this can be time-consuming, and the finished product to many seems plenty weird.  One time my father-in-law set up his succa in the front yard of his Santa Monica apartment building.  In his enthusiasm for the mitzvah (commandment) to spend as much time as possible, one night he'd brought his sleeping bag and was snoozing happily when suddenly he was awakened by a hulking form with a foul odor who entered the succa and proceded to take some blankets and pillows and settle in.  Startled, my father-in-law asked what was going on.  The inebriated, smelly homeless fellow who was making himself at home replied, "Whatsa matter man?  There's room in here for another one!"

Perhaps the most memorable succa we've constructed here in the Great Northwest was the one with skakh that an accommodating tree-trimming company spared from their shredder upon our request.  As our family and guests, totalling 12, began enjoying our first meal under the fragrant boughs, we started noticing small orange items falling on our table, our hair, and into our soup.  The items moved, wriggling in our bowls: The foliage was infested with worms.  Group scream.

"Fractured Bubble," winner at Sukkah City

I can even write about the strange customs of this holiday because of the reassuring fact that apparently it has now gone mainstream, as in Midtown Manhattan, New York.  Last week, in Union Square, artists and architects from around the world constructed their unique visions of innovative sukkot, all built according to Jewish law.  The non-profit group Reboot announced in May they'd give $10,000 each to selected competitors to erect their sukkot; 600 entrants from 48 countries responded. A dozen concepts were built, displayed September 19-20, and a winner, determined by 17,000 spectators' votes, was announced by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.  The victor, "Fractured Bubble" by New York architects Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan, remains on display throughout the holiday's entire 8 days.  It got coverage in the New York Times and New York Magazine and a raft of Jewish publications; all the finalists move to the New York Center for Architecture for exhibit.

So maybe our peculiar Jewish observance is now chic.  It's called "the time of our rejoicing," and I do look forward to it every year, with family gathering and special adventures mounting ladders to perch large fir branches across a wooden roof frame.  We decorate our succa with tin-foil chains made by our children when they were small; visible through a window (impervious to inevitable Northwest rain) is the rainbow construction-paper chain little hands made 15 years ago. Colored lights, fake grape clusters, apples and pears evoke the harvest theme; posters, including the Jewish historical figures we invite into the succa as "guests" and the agricultural species of Israel, were used by my husband in his sukkot before we were married a quarter-century ago. My clever innovation was to take apart plastic Target dorm doorway hangers and use them as garlands; the bright stars and circles and other shiny foil garlands make our succa sparkle.

Maybe we're eccentric, in this Skype and YouTube age, to cling to ancient traditions, but somehow sitting outside in our coats in this transitional season joins us to our fellow Jews, across time and around the world, and that's a connection you just can't get from a website. Tonight's the last chance we'll have to eat our warm homemade challah bread dipped in honey in our succa; it's somehow melancholy to come inside and resume normal life where each family member goes to a different room or a different house and we put away our sweet reminders of continuity for another year.

Here's what it was like to tour around Sukkah City in New York's Union Square:

Building a Tabernacle in our Backyard

The stress and emotion of Yom Kippur quickly gave way to facing the building of our succa for the Feast of Tabernacles (the bizarre English translation for the holiday of Sukkot, shelters).  Living in the Northwest, that means it's time to finally trim all the firs and cedars blocking our view that we've let burgeon until just this moment.

We're fortunate to have a surrogate family member we call our "handyman" for lack of a better term (he's been with us for 22 years) to help with the dirty work, but  for the temporary outdoor room we're constructing to be proper, a Jewish person must lay the freshly-cut boughs atop the "roof's" wooden frame.

The way everyone's schedule worked out, that Jew was me.

With a rickety aluminum ladder quaking beneath me, and my trusty associate handing up the prickly branches, I struggled to place the 5- and 6-foot-long trimmings astride the beams ten feet in the air.  I needed to cover the enclosure to preclude gaping holes, ideally with enough "skach" (greenery) to at least briefly fend off likely drizzles and showers for the week-long festival.

The nighttime air was brisk, and a blue-edged circle formed an angelic corona around the gibous moon.  The spires of dahlias grown leggy in their patio pots were a strange audience for my death-taunting endeavor.  After each branch was laid, I clambered down the wobbly ladder to move it a few inches, making my way around the whole 20-by 10-foot perimeter, and down the center.  Each new placement of the ladder was fraught with peril, as it teetered on uneaven pebble-pocked hardscape.

The boughs, still damp, bent easily, but sharp splinter-thorns occasionally pierced my fingers, and gooey sap oozed onto my hands.  The flat, leathery cedar fronds felt oddly inorganic, but the Douglas Fir cuttings provided the needly reminder that our succa was a true Northwest product.

The walls of the succa can be nearly anything, and to preserve our lake view and any precious sunlight, I'd chosen thick sheets of clear plastic.  Now that the skach is up, I'll bring out my boxes of decorations--tinsly colored garlands, a tin-foil looped chain my children made years ago, strings of grape-shaped garden lights, and dried ears of speckled corn.  We'll unfurl the decades-old posters of the "uspezim," the forefathers who we welcome as "guests" each night in our succa, and the artsy drawings of the seven biblical food "species."  We've already polished the silver etrog case, and tomorrow night we'll pick up its fragrant fruit, part of the "arba minim," (myrtle, palm and willow branches, and the etrog) that are shaken together daily in perhaps the weirdest of Jewish rituals.

So there I was, in the dark, teetering on a jiggly ladder, hurling enormous fronds on a temporary frame on our patio.  Was this fun?

Ummm...actually, yes.

Sukkot is "the time of our rejoicing," and having my entire family together and home, and soon, sitting outside in our heavy coats sipping soup is something no modern wizard could have cooked up.  But its very oddness makes it memorable and special and worthwhile.  There's no autumn that slips by unnoticed--dining with the wind whipping through the branches, we not only remember our vulnerability--already in the forefront of our minds after fasting and praying all day on Yom Kippur--but we create shared memories that only such strange experiences can bring.  Just as camping outdoors is more eventful than staying in a hotel room, spending a week "dwelling" in our succa, with downpours and "disasters" (eg. the year our "skach" was found to be populated by zillions of little worms unable to defy gravity) provides highlights for our days and our relationships.

Chag Sameach--happy Sukkot--and may your rejoicing not include worms!

Gimme Shelter

It's almost the "Feast of Tabernacles," the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. It's called "the season of our rejoicing," as God has allowed us to clear our slates at Yom Kippur, and now, by constructing a booth in our back yard where we take all our meals and spend as much time as we can, we show our confidence that God provides our true shelter.

We have eight days of holiday, the first two and last two being full-out "yom tov," days when, like Shabbat, we stop work and any creative activity. The big difference from the Sabbath for families like us who are hosting guests in our succa is that we can cook via the transfer of flame. The intermediate days of the festival are less restrictive but still a notch more special than non-holidays.

This year we enter the festive week more acutely aware of our vulnerability, which is a theme of Sukkot. Our backyard booths, covered by cut branches--in the northwest, fir--have roofs whose formerly-living, water-filled organic matter evoke the "clouds of glory" that protected the Jews in their historic wanderings in the wilderness prior to entry in the Promised Land. In the wilderness, the Jews were dependent on God for everything, from their manna food to the miraculous repair of their clothing, to their climate-controlled environments. The message? After being forgiven our sins, we must not get too cocky and assume our own amenities are any less from God.

With the stock market tumbling, the government scrambling, voters confused, disenchanted and seeking change, we are all feeling vulnerable.

It makes me anxious. Not only is national finance teetering, but so are institutions that have been the bedrock of civilization. Connecticut, in a 4-3 judicial ruling Thursday that cannot be appealed, will begin allowing gay marriages October 28. The decision written by Judge Richard Palmer held that civil unions violate equal protection clauses, a whopper of a difference from the rulings (also each by one judge's vote) that brought gay marriage to Massachusetts and California. This is a precedent whose domino effect could destroy the essential character of marriage, and yet with news dominated by an election maelstrom and financial chaos, received yawning coverage and little comment.

Yes, it's the economy, stupid, and stupid we are, most folk parroting buzzwords like "subprime mortgage" and "fannie mae and freddie mac" without really understanding what's going on. Derivitives? Hedge funds? Can you clearly define them? Yet most people are willing to blame Bush for it all, forgetting that we were in a huge boom just last October, and it's only since Democrats controlled both houses of Congress that suddenly those "subprimes" and "fannie and freddie" caused Wall Street collapse. In fact, in the last presidential debates, "Wall Street" was used as a synonym for "greed and corruption."

It's just not that simple.

And so, with much insecurity, we move to our succa. I personally could use a dose of emuna, faith in God. I can't say that sitting in the succa for meals provides it for me, frankly. But serving our guests, observing this time together as a family, noting the colder nights and threatening rain does remind me that political and financial issues are, like most everything, temporal. This, too, shall pass, and so being anxious about it serves no purpose at all.

Chag Sameach--a happy, meaningful Sukkot--and may we all take refuge in the most significant kind of shelter.

Sukkot Heresy, Mitt Romney, and Northwest Rain

It is the Jewish holiday of "Sukkot," the Feast of Tabernacles, one of the "shalosh regalim," the three "legs" of a triad of festivals for which all Jews used to make pilgrimage to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Called in the Torah "the time of our rejoicing," it is a happy holiday where observant Jews build booths on our balconies and back yards, covered with cut tree branches or plants called "skach." There we "dwell" for seven days (eight in the diaspora), eating all our meals and, if at all possible, sleeping out there, too.

Our succa has cut fir branches on top, and walls of clear vinyl sheets so we can retain our view and the daylight. If the holiday doesn't sound peculiar enough already, it is in these temporary structures that we shake the "lulav," a giant asparagus-like combo of four types of organic material--myrtle, palm and willow branches, held with a lemon-esque fruit called an "etrog."

Our family's succa is decorated with garlands that can take the rain (it was my innovation to cut hanging door "curtains" styled of stars and colorful rings by Target for dorm rooms into separate garlands) and strings of summer patio-lights (little clusters of grapes, luminaria-style metal bulb-shades, glass spheres, all also from Target). We have shimmery foil accordion flowers hung on the far wall, tin foil and construction paper chains the kids made years ago (the paper one hung inside the window-wall that forms one of the succa walls). We have colorful posters in Hebrew describing the "ushpezin," the spiritual "guests" we welcome each day into the succa, and the crops mentioned in the Bible that grew in the Holy Land. Also, I've hung realistic soft-plastic grape clusters, apples, strawberries and acorns around the edges and from the cross-beams (no farther than three t'fachim--hand-breadths--from the ceiling). The rules for constructing a succa are all very precisely described in the commentaries. The decorations are a matter of personal custom and taste.

We're taught that we put together our huts to:

--enable us to recognize our vulnerability and reliance on God,

--associate this experience with the ultimate redemption of the Messiah in days to come, when humanity will dwell in peace within a giant succa (made from the skin of the Leviathan, whatever that will be!), and

--feel God's unconditional love and regard for us, similar to His enveloping the Jews of the exodus in the "ananay kavod," the "clouds of honor" that protected them from the elements and emphasized their unity as they traveled as a people toward the Promised Land.

Even having learned all of the above, and plenty more, in my many years of Jewish study, I will confess that while I enjoy this holiday (enormous amount of work preparing and hosting guests aside), it still strikes me as bizarre. The message of our reliance on God rather than an arrogant assumption that what we build is a "real" shelter, is valuable, and I guess I can see where going outside for a week might convey it better than simply having a picnic. But the lulav? OK, its species are said to represent various types of Jews, those who do mitzvot and don't; those who are knowledgeable in Torah, and not, but that sounds like an after-the-fact rationalization for a very strange ritual. Ultimately, I guess, it, like many of our mitzvot, is actually a test to see if we're willing to do commandments just because God told us to.

But...am I a heretic?...how is the oddness of Jewish commandments different from Mormon beliefs and practice that endanger Mitt Romney's presidential bid? Mormons have rationalizations and explanations for their theology and behaviors that seem weird, even wildly unacceptable, to the rest of us. And they're fully convinced that theirs is God's true religion for mankind, and they're willing to give two years of their lives as missionaries to convince others of it. But lots of Christians, for example, refuse to vote for Mitt Romney, an upstanding, patriotic, brilliant statesman, because his theology, (not his lifestyle, which is exemplary) is illogical. Dare I confess that I, too, find his faith a deterrent?

Yet I'm willing to quiver a lulav and etrog in a succa for a week, "blessing" God for sanctifying us with His commandment to wave it. And lulav shaking didn't seem to hurt Joe Lieberman's acceptability. Doesn't compute.

In any case, here in the Northwest, we have been deluged with rain, on and off. The three days of holiday so far--two of Sukkot followed by Shabbat--allowed us three festive meals with guests under the fir boughs. After a drippy soup course on Shabbat, however, the clouds let fly, and the thirteen of us grabbed our place-settings and ran for cover. All day today, rain has pelted our succa. The dahlia centerpiece is drooping, the cheerful tablecloth is sodden, two garlands hang lifeless, having come unattached at one end. The time of our rejoicing continues, though it would proceed more heartily on my part were the sun to emerge.

Catching up on the newspaper this morning, I read the front-page headline in the Seattle Times of a week ago, titled "An Ode To Gray," describing our morose weather over the past several months--typically the only time when our webbed feet could metamorphose into toes and our pasty bodies eagerly absorb a bit of Vitamin D. "The National Weather Service recorded not a single clear day in June at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport," the article began. "Zip. zed, nil, nada. July and August also offered a dreary parade of partly-cloudy this, and cloudy that, with drizzle thrown in... Should Puget Sound residents feel entitled to grouse? Yes. A mere 19 clear days were recorded all summer at Sea-Tac."

So, to my friends in the mossy Northwest, may you wave your Asparagus proudly in the sunshine, may your skach stay fresh, and your family gather in harmony as we continue the time of our rejoicing...