

It is Sukkot, the harvest festival, a festival of all the good that has come, a time to celebrate the new year. It is a time to pray for rain.
Before today, all I knew was that Sukkot is the harvest festival and sort of shanty temples, called sukkah, are erected on campus. I never saw a sukkah in Los Angeles, but there is one in the Cowell courtyard. Last night I slept there for an hour. I donapos;t sleep much. Tonight, unable to sleep and generally upset, I went up to sleep in the sukkah.
Our sukkah has a palm frond roof and white tarps for sides. It is hung with crepe paper and shiny plastic Stars-of-David. Lying there, I thought about the cave and the sea, the Torah stories we talked about in class. I looked up at the moon and the stars and tried to imagine being there with other people. The sukkah reminds us of the forty years spent wandering the desert (Exodus and pieces of Numbers and Deuteronomy), and thatapos;s a lot to imagine; I wonapos;t pretend I was close, but it felt good to try. And for the first time in far too long I felt, through and through, good.
But now Iapos;m back in my room at three oapos;clock in the morning, annoyed because I have been kicked out of the sukkah. I feel pretentious, but I really believe in this, in collective memory, in reliving the old stories. Yes, it sounds... Crazy. Even I know how crazy it sounds. Still, I donapos;t like having to leave. I donapos;t like being back in this horrible place; the sukkah is supposed to be a place to pray, to be with others, and yes, to sleep. If people are being told to leave the sukkah every night, isnapos;t this an indication that we should be allowed to stay? That enough of us want to--and in this country, the way you wish to worship is supposedly guaranteed. Only not so much. Iapos;m so miserable now. I donapos;t like being here in this place with these people I canapos;t trust. The only one of my housemates I half trusted hasnapos;t spoken to me since I came out to her. Itapos;s only been a week, so I cannot say how related those two things are; nevertheless. I thought of the sukkah as a sort of haven, even just for now. I know Gd is everywhere, in everything, as much as in the sukkah, but... I donapos;t know.
Being Jewish is not so much about Gd sometimes. Sometimes itapos;s more about everyone else. The sukkah wonapos;t be up more than a few days more, and itapos;s not worth fighting over, but I hate having it taken away. I hate being made to feel like I was doing something wrong just because I was doing something different, especially something that is not so different. I have to consider what Rabbi Fern said this afternoon:
"Any time someone tells you youapos;re being
too something, you have to consider that what theyapos;re saying is youapos;re being too Jewish."
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