Sukkot!

For those of you who aren't familiar with the holiday of Sukkot, I shall attempt to explain it a bit. For those of you who are familiar with the holiday, I'm guessing some of you still don't know all that much about it because it is confusing and repetitive and even after having experienced it in Israel, I myself am still unclear about a few things. Basically Sukkot is a week long celebration of the harvest in which people sleep and eat outside for the duration of the week in a hut/fort structure called a sukkah (sort of like when the Jews wandered in the desert for 40 years). I have enjoyed seeing the sukkahs crop up everywhere around Netanya--on street corners, front yards, roofs, and most commonly on apartment balconies. I don't know if people actually sleep in them, but I do know that they usually decorate them with (tacky) fake plastic fruit and paper chains, and that at a minimum the first meal welcoming the holiday is eaten in the sukkah.  To me, Sukkot does not have that much of a religious significance and I don't understand why it warrants the entire country taking off work for a week. While not everything was closed like during Yom Kippur, many things were. The school where I work, for instance, has a two week break for the holiday. Tragically, so does the 9 shekel felafel place down the street. Many of my fellow fellows (Sorry, I had to!) took this time to travel abroad, but I wanted to stay put and enjoy being in Israel exploring the country and Netanya a bit more.

For the first night of Sukkot, I went with Casey to another host family in Netanya. They lived in a beautiful, spacious, three story apartment with stunning beach views (I feel as if I am writing a real estate advertisement for their home, but really it was as amazing as it sounds). Their sukkah was on the roof of their apartment building, and since they are the only ones with access to the roof, eating outside overlooking the sea was an amazing experience. While the view was easily one of the best parts, they had no tacky sukkot decorations, and there was electricity and proper lighting throughout the whole meal (despite some rain), so that was all good as well. The family was extremely nice and the food was delicious. It was a Persian family (so the food was extra delicious), and the mom was American. She and her children are all native English speakers so it was nice to have Israelis who could communicate well with us. The extended family that showed up did not speak English so well, but were happy to meet us and talk to us a bit nonetheless.

During the rest of the break, I mostly lounged around and hung out with the people from my group who stayed in Netanya. I was able to catch up on my tv shows (finally) and unpack some more, so that was nice. Also, I loved going to sleep around 4am and waking up in the early afternoon, as this is the closest I will ever get to being nocturnal (which I totally would be if it were socially acceptable). While this probably sounds like profound levels of laziness to some of you at home, I actually did spend the holiday doing cool things. I spent one of the days in Tel Aviv where I went to Nachlat Binyamin, the open-air market where local artists come and sell their work (everything is hand made). It was exactly as I remember it from two years ago, and I saw much of the same artwork. I still enjoyed it very much, and was happy to be there. I also visited the Tel Aviv shuk, and it made me very thankful that the one in Netanya is much calmer. The vendors at the Tel Aviv shuk are so pushy and try to sell souvenirs a lot, as it is a pretty common tourist destination. The Netanya shuk, on the other hand, exists mainly to provide cheap fruit, veggies, meat, and nuts to the locals.

All in all, I enjoyed Sukkot, but thought it was much too long. By the time it was over I couldn't wait to start working and get into a routine.  My first day back was great and I loved that I was finally able to begin getting to know all my students!

Melanie

I have no pictures of Sukkot, please enjoy this picture of me feeding some goats instead.