Religion on My Mind

Took down the sukkah today, threw out the lulav and etrog. Kind of a melancholy day, as it symbolizes the conclusion of the early fall Jewish holidays. Eight and a half weeks till Hanukkah.


Having violated several tenets of their religion, including not treating a prisoner with respect, and not washing a dead body while preparing it for burial within 24 hours, Libyans now seem to be debating what to do with the corpse of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. A resolution was said to be imminent.

Since Islamic law has already been shunted aside, why not cremate the body, brush the remains into a small can, place it in an airplane and disperse the ashes over the desert? That would surely please those who don’t want to make his grave a shrine, while pleasing his supporters as his ashes would be part of the Libyan landscape. A win-win for all.

It’s still uncertain who pulled the trigger that executed the Libyan dictator, and under whose authority, but it’s certain, according to the NY Times, that Libyans killed Muammar el-Qaddafi. According to the Associated Press, they killed Moammar Gadhafi. That’s the way The Wall Street Journal, the web site for NPR and the German publication Der Spiegel had it, as well. Newsweek, The Jerusalem Post, Time, The Financial Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the BBC and, perhaps most critically, Al Jazeera English, trumpeted the death of Muammar Gaddafi. The Washington Post headlined Moammar Gaddafi’s demise; the Council on Foreign Relations informed everyone of the killing of Muammar al-Qaddafi, while the French paper Le Monde reported the death of Mouammar Kadhafi.

Whatever the preferred spelling of his name, he is dead. Libyans win the shooting prize for killing more dictators than any other Arab Spring uprising.

For the record, I have no problem with the summary execution of the maniacal despot. Nor do I see anything wrong with the desire of his once-cowed people to see first-hand his dead body. I don’t normally believe in capital punishment, mostly because of the possibility a wrongful execution could occur. But in Qaddafi’s case, as it was for Osama bin Laden, death did not come too swiftly or too soon.


As indicated earlier, the festival of Sukkot is over. As I walked in a procession around our temple on the first day of the eight-day holiday, holding my lulav and etrog (a lulav is a frond of the date palm tree with sprigs of myrtle and willow; an etrog is a fruit of the citron tree) while singing hosannas, I couldn’t help but think to myself how strange religious customs are. Lest you think I am blasphemous, our rabbi commented out loud the next day how this ritual makes it seem we have not evolved too far from paganism.

Whatever the religion, faith has a way of challenging our sensibilities, of tickling our senses of humor. I couldn’t help but shake my head in wonder when I read about the thousands of Polish Catholics who had recently gathered for a special Mass in Sokolka in eastern Poland. They came to celebrate what they perceived to be a miracle, the appearance on a communion wafer of a dark spot they believed is part of the heart of Jesus.

According to church officials, two medical doctors verified the spot as heart muscle tissue. Since Catholics believe the wafer transfigures into the body of Jesus during Holy Communion, it was not too unrealistic for true believers to reason the heart tissue belonged to Jesus.

I know it sounds far-fetched, but who am I to say they’re crazy. Indeed, I’ll end with a quote from Lane Filler, a member of the Newsday editorial board, in a commentary on the religious beliefs of the Republican presidential candidates:

“So let me get this straight. If you believe God spoke to people and angels walked the Earth thousands of years ago, you’re in a religion. If you believe God spoke to people and angels walked the Earth hundreds of years ago, you’re in a cult. And if you believe God spoke to people and angels walked the Earth on Thursday, you’re in a mental institution.”

Sukkah Time, Almost

Today was a perfect day to erect the frame of our sukkah, the temporary hut-like structure that is central to the holiday of Sukkot. Technically, you’re supposed to wait until after Yom Kippur this Saturday, but I’ve never been a technically religious person. I’m more into the tradition and ethos of a holiday than the strict precepts that have evolved over the centuries.

So, the speed-rail frame went up, with hardly a miscue. I’ll wait until after Yom Kippur to drape the sides, drop on the lattice roof and decorate the inside with hanging plastic fruit, garlands of colored leaves and some white Christmas lights that give it a real holiday feeling.

For those who want to know more about sukkah building, here’s a link to an older blog: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/09/sukkadah-time.html


Handy Man. Not: My sukkah-building prowess notwithstanding, I am not by any stretch of the imagination a handy-man around the house. Oh, I manage to fix some things, but more often than not I am construction-challenged.

Gilda’s favorite story about my do-it-yourself skill set harks back to our first house, a Tudor-style three bedroom home built in 1932 that we bought 33 years ago. It had a large master bedroom with a walk-in shower in the master bathroom. The showerhead was one of those large round fixtures mounted in the middle of the ceiling tile, the kind that provides a soft rain spray. I prefer a more invigorating shower so I got my tools out to replace the showerhead with a WaterPik Shower Massage, back then the gold standard when it came to powerful replacement alternatives.

Try as I might with my wrench, I could not get the showerhead to budge. After 30 minutes I confessed my inability to Gilda. She calmly walked into the shower, climbed the ladder and turned the showerhead until it came off. Voila!

Had we not moved from that house several years later I would still be suffering daily embarrassment as water cascaded down over me. Not that Gilda lets me forget about this misadventure. It’s just that she’s kind enough not to bring it up except when I’m lauding my DIY skills to those who don’t know any better.

That first house produced some great memories, including the time I flooded out the basement bathroom trying to replace a valve in the tank. I wrote about it more than a year ago, so if you’re interested in reading more about my ineptitude, here’s the link: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/06/water-water-everywhere.html

Sukkadah Time

Finished putting up the sukkadah Monday.

Now, most of you might think the temporary hut that is part of the annual fall Festival of Tabernacles that commemorates the Israelites’ wandering in the desert for 40 years is called a sukkah (plural is sukkoth, the Hebrew name of the holiday). But to me and a handful of my close friends, it will be forever known as a sukkadah.

Almost 20 years ago our group decided to upgrade from sukkoth made of wooden posts anchored in cinder blocks to a more high-tech speed-rail frame construction. We assigned David S. the task of finding a supplier. Try as he might, he kept coming up empty. During one memorable call, he asked if the retailer sold speed rails. No, came the response, followed by, “What are you looking to build?” David hemmed and hawed, not really wanting to get into a detailed explanation of what a sukkah is. Pushed further by the retailer, David said he wanted to build a temporary hut for a religious holiday. “Oh, you want to build one of them sukkadahs,” the retailer said. David didn’t bother correcting his pronunciation, but as soon as he related the story to us we adopted sukkadah as the official terminology of our construction activity.

We eventually found a fence retailer in Scotch Plains, N.J, that carried speed rails. One Sunday morning we loaded my minivan with enough speed rail to build five sukkoth.

Over the years, like most of our group, I drifted in and out of building a sukkah. I started again last year and have made decorative enhancements each year. In 2009, I added fabric garlands of autumn leaves. This year, a string of rope lights.

Sukkoth is one of the most joyous of holidays, made all the more so by building a sukkadah.