Faulty Sukkah

My Jewish attachments have many beneficial non-negotiables, or at least minimally negotiables. I follow dietary restrictions.  My weekly Shabbat has its protocols that shut down some of the urgencies of the other days.  The Jewish calendar mandates seasons, usually in the form of Festivals.  Each has its joys, some its burdens.  Passover foods, the Omer Count, a dairy meal challenge for Shavuot, and uncomfortable Tisha B'Av in midsummer, the assembly of people not seen in a while for the Holy Days, the Sukkah that follows, festivities of Hanukkah, fruits of Tu B'Shvat, and the merriment of Purim.  Most challenge me in some way, whether creating a dinner, cleaning house, learning a liturgy portion, or simply being in shul when that's not my preferred destination.

Physical demands only come twice.  Preparing my house for Pesach requires multiple trips between my home's first floor and the basement, mostly to bring sometimes heavy boxes of stored dishes and cookware upstairs, then back down again at the Festival's conclusion.  Washing them can be tedious but preparing the food glorious.  Sukkot requires me to build a sukkah, a flimsy transient structure with a few requirements to make the structure valid.  That Festival is in progress.

Building our sukkah has gone through a few transformations over many years, but having one for our family, and usually for guests, has become one of those non-negotiables.  These structures vary considerably in durability, though none intended to be durable, and in effort required to assemble them.  Mine has transformed from one of wooden beams and cloth walls to a more commercial frame of rust-resistant steel pipes connected by plumbing joints.  A skin of canvas then gets placed around the frame, held in place by bungee anchors inserted into grommets and wrapped around the steel tubes.

The sukkah's validity is established by its roof.  Traditionally, that must come from branches, mostly evergreens, sometimes parts of corn stalks, not always readily available.  The commercial kits, which we use in recent years, have a series of wooden slats that get rolled out over the steel tubing.  The fit could be better.

As my wife and I enter our senior years, the physical capacity to assemble this has waned.  It requires a step ladder, which I have, but which has weathered over decades.  The tubes do not always fit securely into the joints.  Always a two-person job.  And placing the prefab roof atop the frame exposes the limitations of its construction which leaves little leeway for lapses in placement.  I found the branches easier to place, though harder to find.  

And then we have weather, once assembled.  The structure resembles a box kite.  Over the years, brisk winds of the noreaster season have displaced ours.  This year the winds created a topless sukkah, no longer in conformity with the rules of construction.  

Construction has taken a toll on me.  While coping with medial knee pain through physical therapy, the ups and downs of the step ladder, the need to reposition myself to insert tubing into joints, thread the bungees through the grommets, and balance the wooden roof onto the frame has challenged my physical therapy progress.  NSAIDs have gone from PRN to q12h with some benefit, but not enough to postpone orthopedic assessment.

While having my own sukkah has been a seasonal non-negotiable, the toll it has taken requires me to reconsider.  I could hire a handyman and direct him.  Or with some luck, the ortho folks can restore my knee, though they cannot reverse some other aging features that hint maybe a ladder creates too much risk.  Communal sukkahs trace to antiquity, suggesting that individual ones so common in suburbia many have in another era exceeded the financial ability and physical capacity of our ancestors.  This year's effort brings me to a branch point, figuratively and literally.  The sukkah will come down more easily than it went up.

Voters Decided

When I participate in a Zoom session with folks from other parts of America, as they express irritation with their representatives, I almost gloat that my state remains pretty mainstream.  We do not elect racists, idlers seeking entitlements, or people who think green everything should get mandated by law.  I've not even encountered public hostility ot Jews or our attachment to Israel as a place of Jewish sovereignty, something that has no bearing in our local elections beyond the positions of those we send to Congress.  My state has a single dominant statewide party, the Democrats, with legislative majorities, though not quite supermajorities.  For the most part, our officials function as technocrats, people who understand economic growth, the importance of favorable bond ratings, and an element of sensitivity to those segments of the public that have not fared well. Divisive issues are settled by primaries, not general elections.  This biennial expression of citizens' preference took place this week.  Nationally, I sense a desire to hit the reset button, throw the rascals out.  And to some extent the registered Democrats did that.  

Statewide we returned incumbents and replaced a vacancy for State Treasurer with a professional finance expert.   For the legislature, many office holders got their termination notices, including my State Senator.  I've known him for some time.  A competent, decent fellow.  An administrative career professional rising to a position of prominence with my state's largest employer.  I voted for him.  He lost his primary, as he had been ousted from the State Assembly in a primary a few years before.  I got to know the Assemblyman who beat him, another very worthy fellow who seems more empathetic than my more businesslike friend.  

This round of primaries saw an upstart sub-party.  The Working Families Party seemed loosely organized, adequately funded, and probably made themselves more visible than some of the incumbents.  They turned over eight seats, cominng within a few votes on another.  They will have a presence in the legislature, though I am not sure what type of legislation they will either create or insert provisions into.  They do not seem woke, as in gimme what you deprived me of through history, but they set a divide between those who have prospered and those who have not.  Since only 22% of registered Democrats voted, they likely targeted neighborhoods where they would generate motivation.  Their candidate came to my front door early in the campaign season, as did my friend who lost.  I was not home for either, but they left their advertising.  

And elsewhere, Democrat voters expressed a desire for change, or at least avoidance of impropriety.  My wife's hairdresser's husband had held an elected county office for decades.  He got voted out, probably more related to unfavorable publicity that he could have avoided than any dissatisfaction with his performance in office.

And another familiar face enters.  One of my students from my synagogue teen classes finally won a seat somewhere.  He made it to County Council by about 30 votes.  He promotes himself as an environmentalist.  He seems a bit of a luftmensch, that type of fellow who sort of has a job but not one with responsibilities and advancement.  He does have engineering degrees from well-known places but I suspect his classmates have advanced in their careers more than he has.  And I've not seen him or his twin or his mother at shul in recent years.  But he got enough voters to go his way.  And his engineering degrees will likely pay off, as our county legislative business seems dominated by various forms of land use and construction.  We seem less focused on his issues of Green Space, though I can understand why his campagn to protect our county from endless suburban sprawl would have its appeal.

Might I have a unifying assessment?  Like much of America, my locale has its share of people dissatisfied with their circumstances.  They cannot accurately blame their legislature as much as scapegoat them, which they did.  I saw people who could be moved to acting by somebody knocking at their door or engaging them in some sympathetic way.  The removal from office of my wife's friend suggests that people have become more intolerant of impropriety, or even those who enable impropriety while remaining personally reputable.  Our statewide office holders have represented us adequately, getting returned by big margins.  And those sideshows of woke and blaming Jews did not get tested in my district as they have elsewhere.

I'm currently enrolled in a course on The Federalist Papers at the state university's senior division.  In explaining the proposed Constitution to the skeptics of New York State, our national founders highlighted how they needed to restrain factions.  They did this in part by imposing term limits of various types.  I saw the plus and minus side to their reasoning this week.  We definitely had a faction, this time Working Families.  We also had incumbents who could only continue representing us by getting majority votes.  Statewide we avoided factions, as the founders predicted the outcome of a big electorate.  Locally where the number of voters were few, promotion of niche interests prevailed.  These candidates could go on the attack, while incumbents had to defend.  Indeed, my friend ousted in the primaries, campaigned on what he did in office, not what he would seek if returned.  The foters understood the difference.  They opted for people who would look for a future, not having a past to defend.  For many wage earners, the past did not fare well.  They opted for something else.  The new people will have to define more clearly what that something else is.  They will also have to engage in coalitions to bring their agendas to the voters next time.

Excessive Programming

What is the right number and frequency of events?  Those arias of congregational performance that gather community, though sometimes at the expense of the normal rhythms of Jewish existence, or at least my concept of how living Jewishly expresses itself.  These events attract people, for sure.  Create kehillah, maybe, or a sense of obligation to be seen, as the Protestant sanctuaries depended upon for much of the 20th century.  Attract consumers, yes.  Create engagement, more open to challenge.

These shabbat dinners now pop up monthly.  Selichot this season morphed from worship, reflection, and transition to a spectacle.  There's something not quite right about breaking into a line hora as the congregation recites the Yom Kippur confessional for the first time.  The clergy are not roobs.  Most of the folks stepping and clapping could probably appreciate that too.  I remember selichot from college as the ultimate expression of kehillah.  We reacquainted for the first time since departing the campus the previous May.

Judaism has its times of communal gatherings.  Shabbos, the synagogue sukkah, mass attendance for RH and YK.  There are opportunities, even obligations, to publicly honor people.  We have forums for those fulfilling special projects to present their achievements.  Learning sometimes does better communally, though "teach me something" with no personal effort emerges as a trap.

We also have those private times.  Judaism has its organizations, but it also has its more subdued moments.  Shabbos dinner, mostly with my household, which expanded and contracted over the cycles of life.  A few friends join us at our table a few times each year.  Small gatherings to observe shiva.  Those moments I allocate for myself each Thursday to explore what four whose learning exceeds mine have to say about the upcoming Torah and Haftarah portions.  Solitary time, though not lonely time, reading selected reports in The Forward and elsewhere about Jewish life, history, culture, and more, then sending a note of my perspective to the authors.  That's engagement.

There's a place for joining in, though it can and does create consumers who opt in and out.  Engagement is not that.  It comes in the form of contributing, conducting a class, learning a Torah aliyah or Haftarah that you've not mastered before, cooking the Shabbos dinner, getting asked onto a committee because you have proficiency with what that committee does.  Those people shift from consumer to contributor.

And then we have the creators, the people who design the programs.  I see too much restriction with Dominant Influencers, gatekeeping entitlements, a role that even the most talented cannot easily penetrate.  Those creators design the menu for consumers.  

So how many shabbos dinners do I want to attend, especially when the food from my kitchen surpasses the contents of the foil chafing dishes?  How much entertainment do I want?  How many classes when nobody asked me what education might enhance my Jewish experience?  As we get into the Holy Days, programmed by a Steering Committee of what the Protestants would call their congregational elders, judging a very iffy Selichot that prioritized popularity over propriety, I could see some divergence between my private Judaism over programming.  And I control that private Judaism.

Summer's Transition

Labor Day arrives at the last allowable date this year.  The transition to fall begins a little earlier in recent years.  Schools have mostly returned to session, colleges and public schools, before August concludes.  College football now has a Week 0.  Only a few games make it to my ESPN stream, but they include some teams that will get a significant viewership as the season moves ahead.  

My OLLI program, which coordinates with the state university calendar, still begins after Labor Day, by one day.  My course preferences all came through.  My medical care eased off a bit for the summer, not because it was summer, but some medial meniscus pain got me plugged into a physical therapy program, which should continue in earnest through the fall.  My other medical appointments cluster from September to November.  

Synagogue programming perks up with the Holy Days.  I cannot describe myself as emotionally captured by their arrival.  I approach them with a mixture of obligation, a small measure of renewal, and maybe some personal accomplishment as I build a sukkah to share with guests.  My congregation has doubled down on programming, some of it spectacles that don't generate a lot of anticipation for me in my later years.  I much prefer the rhythms of the calendar, those recitatives of shabbos each week with dinner for two at my dining room table over a communal event for thirty.  But in deference to others who feel differently, these events have significant attendance.  

Even OLLI has a different look for me this fall.  Only three lecture courses, one online.  The others require my participation:  non-fiction writing, a next try at violin lessons, a first try at the acoustic guitar, a course on acting.  Less sitting in a classroom, watching slides or DVDs.  Maybe a little reading to do for one course, but passive sitting for the lectures.  Engagement for the majority of selections that require me to perform in some way.  

Travel comes more easily in the summer.  No big excursions, no airplanes this year.  It is not impossible for the fall, though a strain.  Maybe a day trip, maybe a long weekend.  I'm not hot for adventure, though seeing the grandchildren, now each past their first birthday, adds some joy, enough to offset the car or plane time.  Day trips:  Haven't been to shabbos morning at Beth Tfiloh for a few years.  Probably some places in Amish country.  Maybe public transportation to NYC.  And take better advantage of my SEPTA Senior Pass.  Limited mainly by Physical Therapy schedules.  And every fall needs me to watch a West Chester U game live.

So while the closing months of the calendar year offer activities, I need to choose what I do selectively.  Amid OLLI, Jewishness, health needs, all emerging these months, I cannot neglect that precious ME TIME, sitting in my space, interacting with authors, experessing myself in different forums, and tending to some gradual decluttering of the house and acquiring more mastery in my kitchen.

Scheduling gives structure that better enables activities without assigned times.