Tin-can dancing – Sefardi Simchat Torah style

Some epiphanies come later in life than others, or are only possible in Israel, when you realize that not everybody is Ashkenazi like you are.  One question I heard years ago about Simchas Torah has been echoing in my mind every year, ever since: why is it called “Simchas Torah”? 

(And, yes, in my head it’s still simchas Torah, with a ת/“sav” at the end of the word.  Pronounce it however you like when you read!)

A lot of people lazily refer to the day, when they refer to it in English at all, as “Rejoicing with the Torah,” but you probably suspect this isn’t correct if you know anything about the grammar of possession in Hebrew.  Wikipedia translates it as “Rejoicing of/[with the] Torah,” which I like because therein is the answer. 

The name of the holiday is rejoicing not WITH the Torah, but OF the Torah.  Once a year, the Torah rejoices and we, Am Yisrael, are its arms, its legs, its voice in song.

Why have I been thinking about this this year in particular?  Well, if you’re Ashkenazi, like I am, this picture is probably pretty close to what you think of when you think of dancing with a Torah:

(Skverer Rebbe photo credit Arit126 via Wikipedia)

This kind of Torah is like a baby, easy to dance with.  Just smoosh it flat against your chest and off you go, bobbling lightly and sedately around the shul.

But it turns out that we Ashkenazim are the only ones

Starry-eyed, and misty-eyed

Yes, another starry-eyed, in-love-with-Israel post to say… awesome postage stamps!!!  

I didn’t need to special-request these or anything; just asked for stamps and she handed over a bunch of these lovely ones, highlighting a museum collection of etrog (esrog) boxes.

However, like the title says I’m also a bit misty-eyed over the contents of the envelope on which I pulled out the stamps to stick.  [Okay, that sentence didn’t come out exactly right – up with which I must not put.  I cannot handle more than one language in one day, and my brain is currently in Ulpan Overdrive.]

Anyway, the kids wrote letters to friends back in Toronto, and here is GZ’s, which says he will miss his friend “for the rest of my life??” 

I must say, as obnoxiously noisy and dramatic as he can be when he’s angry and disturbed, he is equally dramatic and heartfelt when he actually sits down to write these letters.  I wish he’d give us a glimpse into this quiet, sentimental side of his world more often.

Speaking of stamps, Naomi was both fascinated and horrified the first time she saw the postage stamps here.  “You mean you have to lick it??” 

As if she’d discovered that you had to lick your bus tickets or your bank card.  I guess if you’re used to the peel-and-stick kind, it does seem equally unlikely, but indeed, the stamps here all seem to be of the old-fashioned, lick-em and stick-em variety.

Everything you wanted to know #3: Sukkahs

… ie, Every Dumb Thing You Might NOT Have Wanted to Know About Aliyah, but I Did and This is My Blog So Here it Comes Anyway.

My question this week:

What's your Sukkah made of???

I asked this during Sukkos, which I understand is called Sukkot in Israel, though it’s going to take time for me to adjust back to saying it that way.  ;-))

Here are the answers (feel free to add your own in the Comments section below!):

Ours is wood on a "permanent" pergola (very much like this one).

Metal poles + fabric (from www.sukah.co.il)

Plastic tarp and bamboo with permanent bracing for the schach

metal poles with a tarp. and bamboo mat schach. we brought it from america; the fabric ones probably let a lot more air in, and i would recommend that. we cut windows in our tarp to allow some air to flow through...

Metal poles and fabric, but you need to make sure that there are enough wooden poles on top to hold the schach in such a way that it doesn't come into contact with metal (which is mekabel tuma). We had wooden boards (walls) in our old place - also very good. The pros and cons: fabric lets in more breeze, but it also lets in more sun, which can really heat up the sukkah. Also, if you have fabric, you need to have more solid items to make up the lowest ten tefachot of the walls. (continued) We have 3.5 walls around our balcony that are each about a meter and a half high. We put the cloth walls up just to make it have the look and feel of the sukkah, but the structure walls make it kosher.

we build ours from scratch every year with pallets and other found wood - this year we borrowed someone's old sukkah frame and embellished it with pallets and rugs and fabric

There…Aren’t you glad I asked???

Sukkah photo by Yoninah; licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.