Stand for Israel

SFI friend Matthew Morgenstern, a British-born Israeli who lives in Jerusalem, sent in photos from today’s Feast of the Tabernacles Jerusalem Parade.

Israeli kids watch the parade from their window a few stories above the parade (the bars are protective).

(Thanks, Matthew!)
 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is warning the world that Jerusalem is being “Judaized.” Apparently, he’s riled that Jews are buying properties in the Holy City.

In other world news, reports are coming in that Rome is being Romanized as Romans are buying houses to live in there.

(In all seriousness, many Jerusalemites do lament that too many Jews who live abroad buy vacation properties in Jerusalem and drive up prices in the holy city. But, then, those same Jerusalemites are also aware that the “Judaization” of Jerusalem took place thousands of years ago.)

Thousands of Christians from around the world are heading to Jerusalem to participate what may be the largest solidarity mission to Israel, the annual “Feast of Tabernacles” that shows Christian Zionists unequivocally standing  for a united Jerusalem.

Organized by the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, participants took part in a weekend at the Dead Sea and will be meeting in Jerusalem this week, culminating in a huge parade through the city’s center to show Israelis that Christians from around the world stand with them. 

As Rabbi Eckstein wrote this week, the holiday of Sukkot, which begins tonight, is known as “the time of our happiness” — and, in Israel, it’s the height of the holiday season (the equivalent of what December is here in the U.S.).

Schools, government offices, and many businesses are closed for the week while the whole country marks the holiday: Spending time in their own family sukkah (the hut whose plural form provides the holiday with its name), as well as visiting family and friends, going on day-trips, and taking advantage of the myriad of festivals and special events being mounted around the Holy Land.

The holiday’s origins are found in Leviticus 23:42-43, which instructs that “All native-born Israelites are to live in booths so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt.”

One of the three pilgrimage festivals (the others are Passover and Shavuot), Sukkot originally called Jews to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to God and take part in national recognition of His providence. In the two millennia since the destruction of the Temple, Jews have marked Sukkot by “dwelling” in the small huts or booths they build just for the week, along with a special prayers which include the iconic “lulav” (a palm frond combined with branches of myrtle and willow) and “etrog,” a citron, prescribed in Leviticus 23:40 (“On the first day you are to take choice fruit from the trees, and palm fronds, leafy branches and poplars, and rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days.”)

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