Community Views

Editor's Notebook

Jewish Learning:
Life-Long For Everyone

A Small Visitor
To A Small Sukkah

RABBI LANE STEINGER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

Several years ago
it was fashion-
able in certain
American Jewish
circles to play the
"what i' game.
This exercise
(enunciated from
synagogue pul-
pits and effected
in congregational classrooms)
posited the end of hostilities be-

priority.
Anti-Semitism, ugly and pre-
sent as ever, does not promise
to go away any time soon. We
must combat it and all forms of
racism vigorously, but fighting
anti-Semitism wil: not be our
highest priority.
The Jews of the former So-
viet Union command and de-
mand our attention. We are
needed in the resettlement of

PHIL JACOBS EDITOR

formal and informal bases. We
must maximize every opportu-
nity for Talmud Torah that we
possibly can. We must invest
more effort, energy and funds
in all forms of Jewish education:
our day schools, our congrega-
tional and communal schools,
our camps and our adult insti-
tutes, (note well that all of them
are "ours" whether we partake
of them personally or not). We

Barbara is a kid
in the neighbor-
hood. She moved
here several
years ago from
out of town, and
she's always out-
`y side playing in
the street, riding
her bike, jumping
in drifts of snow or piles of leaves.
She's about 10-years-old, gentile,
and she plays often in my home
with my children.
We wave to one another when
I pull in from work, and I see her
riding her bike up and down the
street a great deal. She's a street
kid in the sense that her parents
both work. But many of us were
latchkey kids, and many of us
share stories of the "names" we
gave our bicycles and the trips
into imagination where the
gearshifts on our handlebars
would take us.
My family has a minhag (cus-
tom) during Siikkot. We keep a
basket of candies for sukkah
"hoppers," the kids in the neigh-

house was quiet.
From the kitchen window, I
saw Barbara quietly coming into
the sukkah, getting a piece of
candy and then leaving. Our
eyes met through the window
as she walked towards the out-
side gate. She ran, feeling that
she had done something wrong.
She didn't understand because
she had seen other children come
in the door and leave with can-
dy in their hands.
I caught up with Barbara in
the front of the house, asking her
not to run, that it was okay. She
came back into the sukkah with
me. We sat down in chairs, and
I poured her some pop.
She asked about the photos of
the lulav and etrog. She asked
why we built this "clubhouse"
anyway? She told me she
thought that I was lucky to be
Jewish, so that we could do these
kinds of things each year. She
told me about some of the pro-
jects she was doing in her
Catholic Sunday school class. In
a few minutes she was done, and
she was out the door with a "See
ya"
Fortunately, we were able to
have several friends over to eat
with us in the sukkah this year.
There was plenty of cooking and
cleaning up and planning that
went into it. As many will say,
yore toy can be exhausting as
well as exhilarating.
The meal, though, that I'll re-
member for a long time was the
cup of pop and plate of pretzels
borhood. Usually the sukkah shared with Barbara. She left
hoppers come in organized walks knowing that she didn't have to
during a designated time of the "sneak" into the sukkah; there'd
holiday. But this year, because always be candy for her. Next
the weather has been so rea-
sonable, we've had two or three
kids coming by on their own.
The sukkah, with its greenery
and beautiful decorations, adds
another dimension to our lives.
It's wonderful to eat outside with
family. Our sages tell us that it's
also important to view the sim-
plicity of the sukkah as a way to
go through our priorities. A
sukkah isn't just a place to eat,
it's a place to read, to talk, or to
sit and think.
This season, the candy
seemed to be going a bit quicker
from the brown woven basket on time, I told her, she shouldn't
the table. Sometimes we keep run away. Instead, I asked her
a bottle of pop and cups out there to sit back, eat her candy or pret-
as well. In the past, whatever zels, look through the evergreens
candy we had left over usually on the sukkah roof and take in
went to the neighborhood kids the day.
on Halloween.
I told her it was a mitzvah.
Last week, though, I noticed Before she asked what a mitz-
that the sukkah door facing the vah was, I intercepted her
back yard was always unlatched, thought, and told her just to lis-
unhooked. Leaves had blown in, ten to the sounds, breathe the
riding a cool, autumn breeze. But snap in the air and enjoy being
on one particular day, I noticed alive.
that someone else had blown in
A bigger mitzvah was that she
as well. My family was out vis- should come back to the sukkah
iting that afternoon, and the next year. As my guest.

She told me she
thought I was lucky
to be Jewish, so
that we could do
these kinds of
things each year.

tween the State of Israel and its
Arab neighbors, including the
Palestinians.
The hypothetical questions
put to the game's participants:
"What if the Jewish state has

There is a dire
threat to our
people's well being
and survival posed
by our own apathy.

peace and prosperity, safety and
security? What will be the high-
est priority for the Jews in
America then?"
Although peace has not yet
come to Eretz Yisrael, it seems
more of a real possibility now
than a few years or even months
ago. When and if peace does
come, and we pray it soon will,
the Israelis still will need us as
partners in building the land;
but this will not be our highest

Rabbi Steinger is rabbi of
Temple Emanu El.

-

emigres and for the resurrection
of Jewish life in the independent
states for those who stay there,
but these will not be our high-
est priorities.
Maintaining our community
structure and institutions will
be increasingly expensive and
exacting. We will have to work
diligently to conserve the level
of communal excellence and ser-
vice to which we have become
accustomed, but preserving
Jewish organizational life will
not be our highest priority.
I believe that the first item on
our American Jewish agenda is
now and will long remain the
recognition of the dire threat to
our people's well being and sur-
vival posed by our own apathy,
ignorance and indifference. Ac-
cordingly, Jewish education and
learning, Talmud Torah, today
are and for the foreseeable fu-
ture will be our highest priori-
ties.
Not only must we endeavor
to insure that every American
Jewish youngster participates
in a formal program of Jewish
instruction, but we must also
strive to involve adults and chil-
dren as Jewish learners on both

must put learning at the top of
our community's list of things
to do.
A story is told of a famous
rabbi who at a dinner was con-
fronted by a member of the shul.
"Prove to me what it is like to be
an educated Jew," said the con-
gregant. "I want definite proof."
The rabbi took a banana, slow-
ly peeled, ate and savored it.
Then the rabbi pointed to the
empty skin and asked, "Can you
tell me what the banana tasted
like?" "Of course not," came the
reply. "Only the one who ate it
knows that." "So it is with Jew-
ish learning," concluded the rab-
bi. "You must taste it for
yourself."
As a community, we must do
everything in our power to
make the taste of Talmud Torah
familiar to every Jew. It is in
this sense and this spirit that
our people have repeated the
ancient and time-honored
prayer: "0 Eternal One, make
the words of Your Teaching
sweet to us, and to the whole
House of Israel, Your People,
that we and our children may
be lovers of Your Name and stu-
dents of Your Torah." ❑

❑

