SUKKOT: The Significance of Water, Land and the Agricultural Cycle
Matia Kam

The festival of Sukkot and the Eighth Day, Shmini Atzeret signify the end of the first month’s festivals in the Jewish calendar and the end of the agricultural year: “the year in Torah is an agricultural one, it begins with seeding, and the first rain.”[1] In Jewish tradition the year begins on Rosh Hashanah, yet in Torah Sukkot marks the end of the agricultural year, and the beginning of new planting cycle. Sukkot is the time of harvest in which farmers gather the crops [Exodus, 23:16]. Preparations for the new seeding of the fields awaken farmers concern about rain, not knowing if the new year would see rain, or would face drought; if there would be rains of blessing or disastrous storms. Accordingly, water rituals were performed in the Temple in Jerusalem on Sukkot, and the prayer for rain is customarily recited on the Eight day (Simhat Torah). The festival of Simhat Torah marks an end and a beginning, the end of a yearly cycle of Torah reading in the synagogue and a beginning in the reading of Genesis. read more

More on Jonah
Peter Eisenstadt

My favorite book of Tanach is Jonah; short, memorable, funny, profound, endlessly enigmatic. My favorite service of the Jewish year is Saturday afternoon Yom Kippur, when the Book of Jonah is read, when because you’re getting a bit loopy from this fasting business, the story is somehow making more and more sense––“why can’t a person spend three days in the belly of a big fish, after all, stranger things have happened.”

There are many interpretations of the Book of Jonah. Some see it as a satire, some as a stern moral lesson. Some say it is supposed to be humorous, some not. Some argue it is critique of religious parochialism. Some argue—this was a favorite of the rabbis—that if read correctly, it is a defense of religious parochialism, and the insincerity of the gentiles. Others see it as the paradigmatic story of repentance—surely that is why it is in the Yom Kippur liturgy. Or a dramatization of the tension between God’s justice and God’s mercy. Ayala offered a wonderful reading of Jonah a few days ago. Let me offer another way to look at it. read more

Jewish Women for Child Refugees (JWCR) Taking Action: a Plan to Send Lawyers to Artesia N.M.

The Crisis of Child Refugees from Central America
We all have heard about the recent crisis of children refugees from Central America seeking asylum in the United States. These children are fleeing unspeakable violence, and have risked their lives to come here, because remaining in their countries of origin is a death sentence.

A Jewish Commitment
While the question of immigration reform is a complicated and divisive issue in American politics, as Jews, we remember a time in our recent history when it was Jewish parents who put their children on trains and buses, hoping they would find safety at the end of their journey. read more

Jonah: Reluctant, Rebuked and Remembered
A Yom Kippur Reading
Ayala Emmett

Reluctant
Jonah would not be an interesting protagonist if his story was just about a reluctant prophet who demurs when called by God to deliver a message. There are great prophets in TANACH, like Moses and Jeremiah, who were called by God to speak truth to power, to warn rulers and nations, and who, at the moment of revelation, were reluctant. God says to Moses, “I will send you to Pharaoh, and you shall free my people” and Moses understandably says, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites?” (Exodus 3:10-11). God tells Jeremiah, “I established you a prophet unto the nations” and the reluctant prophet says, “I do not know how to speak for I am just a youth” (Jeremiah 1:5). In hindsight, who could blame them for their reluctance? Moses faces a rebellious people and doesn’t enter the Holy Land, and Jeremiah is threatened, stoned, imprisoned, and taken forcibly to Egypt by the exiles, his own people. read more