A Big Post About Sukkot

My last post was on Yom Kippur and since then I have been very busy. In Israel Sukkot is like a vacation time. A lot of people throughout the country do not work and go on trips or hikes (Israelis love hikes). So for the first few days of Sukkot I went to a settlement called Bat Ayin. It is in the West Bank and is the home of the Bat Ayin Yeshiva and about 100 residential families. I went to spend time with Avi and Debby Nueman, a couple who worked at International Kallah, a BBYO summer camp that I attended the summer of last year. Avi is a student at the Yeshiva and Debby works with pregnant women. I forget her title, but she trains them to give birth and then aids in the birth itself. Spending time with them was amazing; seeing as they were both very instrumental in my becoming religious I learned a lot. They have two young daughters whose names I can't spell because they are Hebrew, but they are both very smart and cute. The area that they live in is home to three natural springs called maayans. They are like mikvas, but there are different laws pertaining to them and are more cleansing than mikvas. The one maayan closest to their home was built by Babylonians. It is a natural spring that flows into a pool that is maybe 4 ft. x 4 ft. x 4 ft. and is home to six fish. You go into the pool naked and dunk your head as many times as you want. Some choose four for the letters in God's name, some do six for the directions, but I chose to do seven. Each time in the maayan was very cleansing and
put me in a really good space for thinking and praying. Bat Ayin also has some of the most interesting people I've ever met. All of the people I met were very learned and had a great desire for Torah. I learned so much from the conversations I had with the neighbors. One of Avi's neighbors even lent me a book on Rabbi Akiva. I really loved spending time in Bat Ayin and I look forward to the next time I go there.

I observed Sukkot for the first time while in Bat Ayin. I slept and ate in the Sukkah and shook the Lulav and Etrog that I bought. Sukkot is a really beautiful holiday and it is a shame that it is widely ignored by American Jews. There are only three commandments regarding Sukkot and one of which is simply to be happy. The rest of the holiday is very open ended and allows for time spent with family, loved ones, and God.

Since Sukkot is mostly a vacation in Israel I had no classes and still don't till Sunday. My program took us on a lot of trips. We had a color wars, went to a museum to learn about a special blue dye made from snails that we use on tzitzis, and to a national park where we had to herd a flock of sheep and goats. The coolest thing we did was spend Simchat Torah in Safed (Sfat). It was a crazy party. We stayed in a place called Ascent which is a hotel run by Chabadniks. We then began to eat and drink and dance with the Chasids and it was a really great time. I didn't drink a lot, but some of the kids got super drunk. Some Chabadnik jumped on top of the bima and it broke under him. After a few hours of singing, dancing, and drinking we left for the host families that fed us. We left the hotel about 30 min. later than scheduled so my host family had already eaten when we showed up and they gave us what was left; which I didn't mind. there was another family eating with them and the men of the households, both named Eyal, struck up conversation with us. They are both Chasids who happen to be very smart and knew a bit about Kabbalah. After they told us about the army service they had done I told them about this research paper I did on Life of Pie and Kabbalism and they were both impressed by it. One of the guys even asked me to email it to him. After dinner, we danced some more in a shul with like 20 drunk 15 year olds and then had a little chill session at the hotel where we sang and shared stories for a few hours. I met this man named Osher who told me about how he has lived in Israel with Jews his whole life and has never felt pride in his Judaism like I do because I grew up with so many non Jews. To be Jewish for me means to be religious and to show my Judaism, but for an Israeli to be Jewish is different because he is surrounded by them. The idea that I'm trying to describe blurs the line between Judaism as a people and a religion. After speaking with him for some time I went to bed. I woke up early the next morning at nine and went for more dancing in local shules. At around 11 I was completely out of it. I had slept horribly the night before and my voice was shot and I had been dancing for a while. I basically shut down till a while after lunch. The rest of the day was filled with learning and me being tired. At dinner they brought in this amazing guitarist who played for us. His songs were about God and Judaism. We ate pizza, which was so great, and then went out and danced in the streets with about a bunch of Israelis. It was tons of fun and afterwards we took a bus back to Jerusalem. The bus ride was awful, we got back to the hostel at 2 AM and I went to bed soon after. This post is supper long so I'm not rereading it for spelling errors.