A Branching Out of the Community

ENCINO —  To an outsider, the collection of makeshift shelters of metal poles, wood trellises and palm fronds might not seem like the ideal measuring stick for gauging the strength of a community.

But this celebration of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, a harvest festival characterized by the construction of a sukkah, or booth, in homes or at synagogues, drew 200 people to Encino on a warm October Sunday. Together, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews traveled from home to home, inspecting the carefully decorated structures and drawing closer as they shared food and conversation.

Construction of the sukkah, as each structure is known, is an integral part of an ancient harvest celebration harkening to a time when Jews built temporary homes as they wandered the desert after their exodus from Egypt.

The buildings also are said to represent the huts that biblical Hebrews built in their fields to house workers during the harvest.

Despite the significance of this eight-day observance, it is often overshadowed by the High Holidays--Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur--which come to a close just as Sukkot begins.

The holiday falls within a cycle of religious celebrations concentrated around the Jewish New Year. These culminated Sunday night in the celebration of Simchat Torah--literally translated as “joy in the Torah”--marking completion of the annual reading of the first five books of the Jewish Bible.

One of the appealing aspects of the Sukkot celebration, according to its adherents, is the emphasis on community. For Rebekah Farber, the celebration seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring people together in her predominantly Jewish neighborhood.

“My theory is, there’s a lot of talk about building community,” said Farber, a native of Savannah, Ga., who lives with her husband, Howard, and three children on Oak Park Avenue. “But if you really want to build community, you really need to know the names of your neighbors.”

Toward that end, the Farbers and four couples who live just north of the Ventura Freeway, near Amestoy Avenue, organized a round-robin Sukkot celebration.

Under Jewish law, a sukkah is required to have three free-standing sides, must withstand the wind, have a roof more than 20 feet high and be made of plants that cannot be used for food, said Farber.

In addition, the covering must be thick enough so that the shade in the sukkah is greater than the sunlight, but there are enough spaces to allow one to see the stars through the roof, she said.

With everything kosher, so to speak, the festivities got underway at 11 a.m. at the Farber’s metal and wood sukkah with a bagel brunch and moon bounce.

Then the party moved down the street for salad at Judy and Danny Cole’s shelter, constructed primarily of bamboo.

From there, the procession of adults and children wound around the block to Aldea Avenue to enjoy pizza beneath Jan and Scott Silver’s white-tarped sukkah, before wrapping up the day at two homes serving ice cream sundaes, fruit and coffee.

Celebrants say the holiday is not about eating so much as it is a way to bring together Jews with notable differences in the way they practice their religion, not to mention neighbors who live on the same street but are strangers.

“I think it’s nice because everyone gets to know each other and some of these people I’ve never seen before in my life,” said Baily Silverman, 11.

Sarah Cunningham, also 11, added, “It’s special to know that everybody here is at least in one way like you.”

Traditionally, prayers are recited in the sukkah, and participants also hold and bless the bound branches of palm, myrtle and willow trees, known as a lulav.

The lulav and a citron, or etrog in Hebrew, are waved up and down, and left and right, to symbolize the four corners of the world.

Silver contends those plants represent the four types of Jews, those who are observant, those who are mildly observant, somewhat observant and those who don’t know about Judaism.

“The crux of the holiday is that all four types [of plants] represent the four types of Jews,” Silver said. “One can’t live without the other. One can’t celebrate without the other.”