Emory and Rabbi Bob Build a Sukkah
Recovering family stories is more meaningful because they allow us to pass on those stories and the traditions that come with them...
Whew! I know it’s been a bit since my last post, but my first chag (holiday) season trying to be observant was, well, a lot. My many thanks to everyone who helped me understand ritual and custom, who made space for me to take the time to explore and honor those traditions, and who was gentle with me about deadlines and correspondence.
One of the greatest joys for me about this project in reclaiming family history has been exploring Jewish customs and practices. Aside from its spiritual meaning, this is just the sort of stuff that I love. Most of my hobbies revolve around either seasons (gardening, kayaking) or elaborate sets of rules (tabletop and video gaming). Give me a set of seasonal rules, and I’m in nerd-girl heaven. So, I was delighted when my nephew Emory told me he wanted to build a sukkah this year! (If a little sad that I couldn’t be there to be part of it.)
I found this out a little late, so the sukkah that I ordered for him arrived after the holiday had begun. But as soon as it did, he and Rabbi Bob got to work setting it up. (Extra thanks to Rabbi Bob for being flexible about the rule on that, says the woman who just claimed to love rules.)
It’s great good luck for our family that Rabbi Bob came to lead B’nai Shalom’s congregation during the pandemic. Emory has always been the one of us most interested in Jewish practice and tradition (well, at least before I started this project), and Rabbi Bob has created several meaningful and fun opportunities for him to learn, including a regular movie-and-discussion group with other young Jews in the community. But they also bond over baseball, currently Emory’s great passion. (Rabbi Bob’s first love, before discovering the joys of English and German literature, was baseball. He played Little League, Team/Summer league, and adult league baseball well into his thirties.) As grateful as I am for the rabbi’s very generous work with me, I’m even more grateful for the way he’s encouraged Emory’s—and other young members’ of the congregation—curiosity and learning.
I hope this becomes a yearly tradition, but even if it doesn’t, that it happened this year is already a great good thing.
It also got me imagining what Sukkot must have been like for Shevah Baila and Joseph. It seems likely to me that the shtetl was comprised of the houses closest to the synagogue in Linkuva, many of which were still standing on our visit.
We don’t know where in town Sheva Baila and Joseph lived, but the houses all have large backyards that I imagine were, in those days, used to grow kitchen gardens. We know that my great-great-grandparents were observant… in fact, Sheva Baila grew so suspicious of her oldest son’s success in the US that she once sent a rabbi from Lithuania to check in and make sure he wasn’t up to no good! We know she kept a kosher house and that Joseph as a Talmudic scholar and teacher. So I imagine that in whichever of these backyards was theirs, they built a sukkah every year.
The idea of my great-grandfather and his siblings eating their meals and sleeping in the sukkah, surrounded by neighbors doing the same, makes me happy because it speaks to a time and place where that could happen. Where and when there were enough Jews living safely families could sleep outside in their sukkahs without fear of their neighbors (a thing we’d never do here in East Ridge), and be surrounded by other families doing the same. I imagine the families visiting one another, sharing meals, decorating with the last of the summer’s produce.
I try not to romanticize the lives my family lived in Lithuania… under Russian oppression, things were hard. They eventually had to flee to save their sons from conscription into the czarist army. In the recording of AI talking about family history that I posted in February, there is no sentimentality about an “old country.” He gives the name of the town, a few facts about where other family members lived, and seems entirely disinterested in talking about that part of his life. He and his brothers said so little about it that we have a recording of my great-uncle Charles saying confidently that we come from Latvia. (One of my great-great grandfather’s brothers was indeed born in Latvia, where Sheva Baila was visiting family when she delivered him, but that’s the extent of our connection to the country.) I’m aware that it was not an easy or even safe life.
But I like to imagine they did have this safety: to celebrate Sukkot under the stars, surrounded by lots of other Jewish families doing the same (half of all residents of Linkuva were Jewish at that time), unafraid of their neighbors. What a joy that must have been.
And what a joy it is to that Emory got to build a sukkah this year. Thank you, Rabbi Bob for helping him do so, and Mom and Rick for turning over your backyard to the enterprise. Let’s do it next year, and I’ll arrange my schedule to come help!
I had so much fun working on this with Emory. We now know how many Jews it takes to put up a Sukkah--2, but one of them must be Emory! This was a highlight of my year!
I absolutely love this post, and believe that it would have been safe to sleep in our back yard. What a wonderful thing to be able to say. We absolutely join you in thanking Rabbi Bob for his interest in the young people. That’s our future.