These days we often tend to fondly
regard Sukkot as one of our quainter holidays: waving the lulav and etrog,
building a sukkah and eating meals in it, saying Hallel and processing in the
Hoshanot. It’s a little nature-y, a little strange, and mostly just a welcome
joyful occasion after the solemnity of the High Holidays.
There’s an older name for Sukkot in
the Torah: chag ha-asif. “The
gathering-in holiday.” Back in the day, this was our major autumn harvest
festival. Around this time, our ancestors would’ve either just finished, or been
in the midst of, the second wheat harvest, the millet harvest, the date picking,
(not coincidentally) the etrog picking, the fig picking, the pomegranate
picking, the olive picking, and the grape harvest-- and those are just the
major produce crops of those times. Some of us may vaguely recall something
about this, perhaps because a rabbi or a Hebrew school teacher will have noted
that we lived in sukkot as we harvested and picked fruit.
But we don’t often think about what
harvest meant in our ancestors’ society. It was a time to rejoice because it
was a time of plenty, when you had the most food available to you that you
would have until the spring harvest (around Shavuot). They would give extra
thanks to God because of the bounty that they were gratefully bringing in, and
make extra prayers for rain (hence tefillat
Geshem on Shmini Atzeret), and sundry other supplications to beg God to
rain favor down on the next crop, that they would have been just about to begin
planting, or just starting to plant. And with the sudden and more or less
temporary surfeit of food, it would have been the season of maximal tzedakah giving.
The nineteenth and twenty-third
chapters of Vayikra/Leviticus, and the twenty-fourth chapter of Devarim/Deuteronomy
instruct us that if we have fields we are harvesting, or vineyards, or
orchards, we leave the corners of the field unharvested, so that the poor can
come to get food. Likewise, stalks of grain or fruits dropped by the harvesters
must be left for gleaners (poor people who followed the harvesting reapers to
pick up stalks they let drop), sheaves forgotten in the fields likewise belong
to the poor, and fruit dropped or left unpicked by accident must be left for
them. All of these things are in addition to ma’aser ‘oni (tithes that one had to make to national efforts to
feed the poor) in different years, and in addition to the contributions
residents of a certain area were expected to make to the tamchui, or the food bank/soup kitchen from which poor people were
fed (at least on Shabbat and chagim, if not also at other times), and
miscellaneous tzedakah they were to
give if asked for aid by poor individuals.
It would have been inevitable for
our ancestors that this holiday, much like Shavuot, and much like Pesach (when
they, in reciting ha lachma ‘anya, the
part of the Seder where we say “all who are hungry, come and eat,” would
literally have been inviting the poor of their community to come in and share
the Seder with them) would have been linked with tzedakah, with feeding the poor.
So you can begin to understand how
it seems like a particularly vicious irony that Sukkot is when the US House of
Representatives has chosen to cut SNAP (the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance
Program, AKA “food stamps”) by $40 billion, while at the same time approving
vast subsidies and tax breaks for agribusiness megacorporations.
I will leave it to my estimable
Christian minister, pastor, and priest counterparts to deal with the additional
irony of Tea Party/Republicans cutting aid to desperately poor and hungry
people and enriching and empowering already wealthy and powerful people (to say
nothing of now attempting to force defunding of the ACA via threat of
government shutdown), apparently while claiming to take such action in the name
of a deceased Jewish man who seems to have made a career of agitating for
giving more tzedakah, feeding the
hungry, and healing the sick.
But for us, the irony is bitter
enough in that this is a time we should be focusing on aiding those in need, on
feeding those who have no other food, on providing opportunities to those who
have no opportunities. And our government, theoretically elected by us, to
execute the will of the American People, is-- with appalling relish-- doing
precisely the opposite of those things.
Sukkot is supposed to be z’man simchatenu (the season of our
happiness), for all the Jewish People-- from the heads of households and
landowners to the basest of those held in bond, and even including the non-Jews
among us. Now, for some people among us, and all too many among our neighbors
in the American culture, this z’man
is anything but happy, and, however indirectly it may be, we are partially at
fault.
This cannot go on. More and more,
as the right wing of our political representation grows ever more radical and
fanatical, as the “left wing” grows ever more tepid, centrist, and content to
be purchased by corporate “campaign contributions,” this situation is becoming
less a political setback to the nation and more a humanitarian crisis.
We are, with little exception, not
farmers anymore. Baruch Hashem (thank God), the Jewish People have prospered,
done well for ourselves, even come to wield some influence. But we no longer
find ourselves in a position to fulfill the mitzvot of pe’ah (leaving corners unharvested), leket (leaving gleanings), shichechah
(forgotten sheaves), olelot and peret (unmatured or fallen grapes one
had to leave for the poor), and the ma’aser
‘oni (tithes).
I think we have to restore the
balance to our duties to the poor and hungry by not merely giving more regular tzedakah as we are able, but to
committing ourselves, one and all, to political action, to social justice, to
agitation for change. Regardless of your party affiliation, this treatment of
the poorest, most vulnerable and needy among us cannot be tolerated. This is no
longer merely a matter of budget lines and economic theories: this has become a
matter of pikuach nefesh (saving
lives). And regardless of other political beliefs, we must act maximally,
aggressively, quickly, to help those who need it.
Julie and I have signed petitions,
sent letters, and donated to causes. We will make phone calls. We will add our
voices to the outcry in whatever other ways we can. That is our foremost tzedakah this Sukkot, and we urge you to
do the same.
The holidays are said to be signs
for us. For remembering the covenant, the Exodus, the Creation. Let’s also make
this Sukkot a sign for us to remember our duties to our fellow human beings in
dire need, our duties to aid in creating a more just society, to making future
years, future chagei ha-asif truly z’manei simchatenu (seasons of our
happiness).
-Ami
