Thank you for this reflection - maybe this is another good reason to have read Kohelet a few days ago. Nothing really changes.
I also was struck by how you noted we're "at the exact moment" to appreciate the sense of something slipping away forever vis-a-vis climate change. It reminded me of a talk by Lawrence Krauss I once watched on YouTube in which he remarked about how we live at the exact moment to be able to understand the universe - too early and we could not exist, too late and we would be so distant from the energy and light of other galaxies and stars that we would never be able to figure it out.
Are you based in the US? Sukkot is one of the best examples of Hebrew indigeniety to the Land of Israel, where all of the fakeness you mentioned is stripped away: the season is the right season, the fruits the right and local fruits, the celebration attuned to the land. If anything, Sukkot reveals the artificial nature of Diaspora (where artificial is not necessarily a bad thing, it is just not a natural thing).
The agricultural elements certainly match (though no more than they do for other Israeli produce, which tends to be local). You still might be building a sukkah on a balcony, using modern materials.
Check out what I wrote for pesach about kibbutz haggadot. There are intentional callbacks to an agriculture, but even rituals that involve using sickles to harvest crops are only performed on a symbolic patch of field.
I loved that piece. I grew up reading, in part, from the Haggada of HaShomer Hatzair, and experiencing the holidays as would an indigenous Hebrew: celebrations of our land, its rhythms and its bounty.
Rabbinic Judaism did a wonderful thing by preserving those memories across centuries of exile and scattering, and I do believe the reinterpretation by the Pharisees has merit…however, if anything I think the celebration of the Hebrew holidays according to customs that developed into liturgy are far more artificial than ‘secular’ celebrations of the land in Israel.
Either way, I very much enjoy how you’re framing the question here: how do we understand our rituals as a platform for sensemaking about our present circumstances, and the identification of the seedlings that will define our future.
Thank you for this reflection - maybe this is another good reason to have read Kohelet a few days ago. Nothing really changes.
I also was struck by how you noted we're "at the exact moment" to appreciate the sense of something slipping away forever vis-a-vis climate change. It reminded me of a talk by Lawrence Krauss I once watched on YouTube in which he remarked about how we live at the exact moment to be able to understand the universe - too early and we could not exist, too late and we would be so distant from the energy and light of other galaxies and stars that we would never be able to figure it out.
Maybe lots of moments are really "exact moment"s.
Are you based in the US? Sukkot is one of the best examples of Hebrew indigeniety to the Land of Israel, where all of the fakeness you mentioned is stripped away: the season is the right season, the fruits the right and local fruits, the celebration attuned to the land. If anything, Sukkot reveals the artificial nature of Diaspora (where artificial is not necessarily a bad thing, it is just not a natural thing).
The agricultural elements certainly match (though no more than they do for other Israeli produce, which tends to be local). You still might be building a sukkah on a balcony, using modern materials.
Check out what I wrote for pesach about kibbutz haggadot. There are intentional callbacks to an agriculture, but even rituals that involve using sickles to harvest crops are only performed on a symbolic patch of field.
https://www.jellomenorah.com/p/the-shocking-creativity-of-the-kibbutz
I loved that piece. I grew up reading, in part, from the Haggada of HaShomer Hatzair, and experiencing the holidays as would an indigenous Hebrew: celebrations of our land, its rhythms and its bounty.
Rabbinic Judaism did a wonderful thing by preserving those memories across centuries of exile and scattering, and I do believe the reinterpretation by the Pharisees has merit…however, if anything I think the celebration of the Hebrew holidays according to customs that developed into liturgy are far more artificial than ‘secular’ celebrations of the land in Israel.
Either way, I very much enjoy how you’re framing the question here: how do we understand our rituals as a platform for sensemaking about our present circumstances, and the identification of the seedlings that will define our future.