Big Tent Judaism

Sukkot as a Model of Public Space Judaism

The holiday of Sukkot begins Wednesday at sundown, and Jewish families all over the world will be putting up their sukkot (temporary booths) to celebrate the holiday. In New York City, this festival has been taken to new heights by the nonprofit organization Reboot, which has organized a display of a dozen innovate sukkot in Union Square. To read more about this display, called “Sukkah City,” click here.

Sukkot is a holiday that meshes nicely with JOI’s values of Public Space Judaism and bringing Jewish practice into the public sphere. A sukkah can be built almost anywhere, and is by definition temporary and easy to build. And as a result, many different organizations put the principles of Public Space Judaism into practice during Sukkot. Chabad builds sukkot on the backs of flatbed trucks and Home Depot holds sukkah making demonstrations in order to bring the holiday to where Jews are. The “Sukkah City” display is in keeping with this tradition. It is held in one of the busiest public spaces in New York City, enabling thousands of Jews – affiliated and unaffiliated – to interact with the booths as they go about their day.

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Trending in the Jewish Community

[The following article originally appeared in the Examiner.com. We invite you to Click Here and sign up to receive email alerts when new Examiner articles are published by Rabbi Kerry M. Olitzky]

This is the time of year when folks take stock of their lives. The Hebrew term is cheshbon ha-nefesh, literally, an accounting of the soul. But it is also a time for taking a hard look at the community and where it is going. Just as it is difficult to honestly assess the self, it is similarly quite difficult to brutally confront the stark reality of the Jewish community—its strengths and weaknesses. But if we want to enter the New Year emboldened to face the challenges we will undoubtedly encounter, we have to be prepared.

When John Naisbitt wrote his bestselling Megatrends in 1988, it seemed that the trends he identified were in fact sweeping the country. Moreover, the notion of a megatrend became very important in planning for community futures, especially in the Jewish community. But when Mark Penn and Kinney Zalesne penned their Microtrends 20 years later, things had changed drastically. Sure, the trends were different. But so were the nature of the trends. Micro replaced macro. No longer were there major sweeps. Instead, small trends seemed to dominate. In other words, two diametrically opposed trends can coexist. One does not eclipse the other.

So what does this mean for the Jewish community?

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For the Sin of Exclusion of Intermarried Families

In the most recent issue of the Forward, the paper asked many prominent rabbis and thinkers to share what they believe we as a community need to atone for this Yom Kippur (which begins this Friday night, Sept. 17). One that immediately jumped out at us was written by Rabbi Harold Kushner, who believes we should atone “for the sin of writing off the intermarried.” He writes that instead of viewing all those who intermarry as “trying to escape their Jewishness,” we should turn the tables. “We would do well to see intermarriage more as a doorway that can lead into Judaism than a doorway leading out.”

Almost ten years ago, we used the same message in a holiday card and received many angry responses, but our conviction never wavered.

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High Holiday Follow-up

Each year we see an increasing number of news articles covering the growing phenomenon of free High Holiday services. That’s because more and more synagogues and other Jewish organizations are recognizing that the “pay-to-pray” model can no longer serve as the only option, if we hope to provide meaning at the holiday time for all who would join us. It’s exciting to see an increasing number of free and low-cost options for those who are not yet fully on the inside of the community.

And yet, how do we measure success of these free High Holiday offerings? Certainly, a well-attended service that people feel good about is a positive result, in and of itself. If such programs really do provide people with the meaning and/or spirituality that they’re seeking, though, another important measure of success would be that we on the inside of the organized Jewish community won’t have to wait another full year to see these folks return!

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