Our Evolving Tabernacle

 

The Jewish custom of building a little hut or sukkah in one’s garden or backyard once a year supposedly harks back to the time many thousands of years ago when the Hebrews were wandering in the wilderness after having left Egypt and had to live in makeshift huts or tabernacles, more or less in the way the Beduin Arabs live today.

Like many aspects of the Jewish religion, practice and history are bound up together. So it is with the Passover meal, the Seder, with its unleavened bread, matza, and the various symbolic foods all chosen to remind us of about the time when we were in the process of emerging from being slaves in order to become a unified nation. And of course Hannuka commemorates the Hasmonean revolt against the Greeks and the symbolic cleansing of the Temple through the vial of untainted oil. Purim is another reminder of a ‘historic’ event that may or may not have happened, but at least it gives Jews a chance to dress up and celebrate a carnival of their own.

As a child growing up in London I enjoyed the adventure involved in eating our meals outside our house in the little makeshift hut my parents constructed using blankets that were hung between the two other walls formed by our house on one side and the brick wall between our garden and the one next door, on the other.

We children were set to making coloured paper chains and lanterns, while our mother’s artistic talents were devoted to preparing little string bags for fruits of various kinds. All of these were hung around the ‘walls’ and from the roof made of branches from the various trees available in London in the 1950s. No one thought of the palm branches that are so ubiquitous in Israel today, or even of the ‘permanent-temporary’ roofs that are also very popular, and which apparently meet the necessary religious requirements. I regret not having asked my parents how they celebrated the festival in their homes in pre-war Germany.

The festival of Tabernacles falls at the beginning of autumn, and so it is almost inevitable that some rain will fall at that time of the year, whether it’s in Israel or in Europe, or anywhere in the northern hemisphere. I remember dashing through the rain with a bowl of soup in my hand during one such downpour in London, in a procession formed by my parents, my sisters and me.

But as is the way with children, we found it all tremendous fun, and the novelty never wore off. In fact, we were always disappointed to come home from school one day and find that our lovely sukkah had been dismantled. But then I grew up and put away childish things, as the saying goes, and never gave the festival another thought.

It was only when one of my own children came home from kindergarten one day singing a song about building a sukkah that my husband and I decided that we would need to erect some version of the traditional hut on the minuscule balcony of our second-floor apartment. Our children enjoyed the novelty, just as I had as a child, and while we were not concerned with keeping to the niceties of religious observance, we felt that we were providing an experience for our children that united us with the rest of Israel.

We continued to build a somewhat larger sukkah after we moved to a house with a garden and our children produced children of their own. Each year our three-generation family did its best to squeeze into the confines of our new-old hut, now made from gaily coloured Indian fabrics brought back with us from London’s Petticoat Lane market.

But today almost all our grandchildren are grownups themselves, and our sukkah is too small to contain all those rather large bodies. Since religious observance doesn’t play a role for any of us, there doesn’t seem to be much point in squeezing ourselves into an uncomfortable space in order to eat the meal we traditionally have together on a Friday night.

And so we have loaned our ‘permanent-temporary’ sukkah roof to our neighbours, for one of whom religious observance is paramount, and when they invited us for a meal in their sukkah we gladly accepted. It was a strange but rather invigorating experience to be sitting under our familiar roof surrounded by different decorations and eating the food someone else had prepared. I’m quite happy to pass the baton of preparing a temporary hut on to anyone else who is up to the task.

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‘Middle England’ by Jonathan Coe

 

A friend in France recommended this book as giving some kind of an insight into the inner workings of contemporary British society, with all its quirks and foibles, and particularly into the mindset of that segment of the population that voted to leave the European Union.

Jonathan Coe has set his novel in the Midlands, the area in the geographical middle of England. The people whose actions he describes are mostly middle class and middle aged (though there are one or two younger and older individuals), and I suppose it could be considered to portray a representative cross-section of the contemporary British population. The Britain in which I grew up some sixty-odd years ago was far more homogenous and insular than the Britain of today, and it would seem that that is what some of its population is yearning for.

Although the name of Enich Powell, the Conservative Minister for Health in Edward Heath’s government in the late 1960s is not mentioned specifically, his anti-immigration stance and warning of ‘rivers of blood’ does come up in the conversation of one of the main character’s elderly relatives, and it is this attitude that overshadows much of the events described in the book and turns out to be part of the explanation for what is happening in Britain today.

Benjamin Trotter, the principal character, unpublished writer and ineffective husband/lover, is preoccupied with helping his recently-widowed father to overcome his grief and isolation while at the same time trying to provide moral support for his sister Lois, who is virtually separated from her husband. Lois’s daughter Sophie constitutes another central character of the book, and her initial encounter with and subsequent relations with her husband Ian form another strand of the narrative. In addition to the members of the family which constitutes the core of the book there are several subordinate characters, though these sometimes serve as an unwelcome and even confusing distraction from the main storyline.

But what is the main storyline if not the variegated tapestry that makes up modern Britain? Some of the characters are British-born, white and rooted in their native land while others stem from other countries, as is the case with the Caribbean immigrants who came to live in England from the Commonwealth, in what is popularly known as the ‘Windrush’ generation, after the name of the first ship that brought those immigrants to Britain’s shores. The descendants of the original immigrants feel as British as anyone else even though the colour of their skin betrays their origin elsewhere, and it is they who are competing with the original inhabitants of the island for places at university and promotion at work. To quote Enoch Powell, there is ‘a;sense of being a persecuted minority which is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected.’That feeling has been intensified as people from the countries that comprise the European Union have settled in England in increasing numbers.

As the events described in the book unfold, revealing the deep rift within British society between the haves and the have-nots, the struggle experienced by many to stay afloat economically, the tone of the daily press and the ideological disenchantment of the younger generation, the reader is exposed to the various currents that are constantly eddying about in contemporary British society.

Finally, in an attempt to escape the growing sense of alienation from the general tenor of British society, Benjamin Trotter and several of his relatives and friends decide to move to France and make a new life for themselves there. If that is the only solution to the current situation it can only be described as a very British mess.

All in all, akthough it’s an entertaining read, the book is a depressing comment on modern Britain as it moves inexorably towards a no-deal Brexit, with all the harmful economic repercussions that will ensue.

 

Only in Israel

Like every country, Israel has its advantages and its disadvantages. One of the former is its climate, which is on the whole pleasant (at least in Jerusalem) with sunny days throughout the summer, often with cool evenings and nights. It also has a long coastline giving most of the population access to the sea with all its benefits.

Considering its small size, the country encompasses a particularly wide range of interesting geographical features, with hilly areas in the north, and even mountains on which one can ski in winter. Going south there’s the Dead Sea, with beneficial health properties that have been known since ancient times, as well as the Negev desert, which contains interesting and unique geological formations, as well as a wealth of interesting fauna and flora. At its southernmost point the Red Sea provides a port and a seaside resort where it is always hot in both summer and winter.

You can hardly take a step anywhere in Israel without coming across some archaeological or geological site, starting with the origins of homo sapiens, and continuing through the history of the ancient Near East, with the events mentioned in the Old and New Testaments featuring prominently wherever you turn, resulting in a plethora of holy sites for the three main religions.

But what most distinguishes Israel is its population. Jews from all over the world have come to live here, bringing a wealth of genetic heritages that are mixing and mingling with one another. The population is far from homogeneous as regards both hereditary characteristics and cultural traditions, yet on the whole there is some kind of modus vivendi between all the different kinds of people. Notwithstanding, differences in background can often give rise to differences in manners and mores, and this can sometimes cause conflicts or disagreements, but the country somehow manages to keep going, no matter how deep the internal divisions.

The current political divide has the country split almost exactly in half between those who support the current government and those who oppose it. The political impasse has given rise to two general elections within the last six months and may well give rise to another one in the not-too-distant future. The prospect is dismaying for all concerned, but unless some radical solution is found that will be our fate.

But at a time like now, when the high holydays are being celebrated throughout the country, albeit in different ways and according to different traditions, there is an unaccustomed atmosphere of tolerance and even amity between total strangers.

Thus, as I waited this morning to be seen by an official in the Health Fund in order to arrange an appointment for a medical screening there was much good-natured grumbling among the waiting patients. But no-one raised their voice or protested, and no-one really tried to push in out of turn (as often happens at non-festive times of the year), and everyone wished their neighbour good luck, good health, and a good year as their turn came.

The best moment for me was when, after returning home with the precious referral in my hand, I rang the central Health Fund number in order to arrange the date and time for the screening. Today is the first working day after a very long weekend and so the line was busy for a long time. Eventually, however, one of the attendants at the call centre picked up the phone and was ready to hear my request. What happened next left me flabbergasted.

When I repeated my name, at her request, she said “Oh, I see that tomorrow’s your birthday. Have  happy birthday!”

She really made my day, and it made me wonder whether that would or could have happened anywhere else in the world.