The Spirit of Succoth: Ushpizin and Farming

JDC's Succoth Events

In an attempt to complement, and not compete with or divide the community, we decided to hold two Succoth events as the first two JDC events of this year. These events were designed to bridge gaps and provide opportunities that otherwise would not exist in the Jewish community. This year, Succoth and the Chinese October holiday fell at the same time, giving us the opportunity to do something doubly meaningful. Succoth and the Mid-Autumn Festival have a few things in common, and it allowed us to organize content-filled and meaningful activities.

The first of these events was a Succah-Crawl, following the long and beautiful tradition of ushpizin during Succoth. In what turned out to be a revolutionary, first-ever occasion, I set up an afternoon of visiting five different succot across the city and across the wide spectrum of the community. We were a group of about ten Jews, ranging in age from mid-twenties to mid-fifties (though a few young children joined for parts of the event). The first two of these were private succot, in the homes of liberal, mixed-marriage families in the French Concession. We spent about 45 minutes in each one, eating snacks (including halva cookies I made for the event) and chatting. We walked from one to the other, which gave a neighborhood feeling to the occasion, a rare experience in huge, bustling Shanghai. We had to cancel the Downtown Chabad center, as they just had a baby.

We then took taxis to the Hogqiao area, where we visited the Sepharadic Center and then went to their succah. Many members of the group had never been in to this center, and it was a pleasant experience. We sat with the rabbi and his wife and daughter, had home-made pastries and learned about the four species and the meaning of Succoth. We then walked to the Shanghai Jewish Center (Chabad) for the big finale: a sushi dinner. The rabbi and I had coordinated the event so that it would coincide with his sushi night. It was a nice ending, having sushi dinner all together in the big community succah.

The trip to the Farm is something that came together thanks to Rebecca Kanthor. In the days leading up to it, it became extremely popular among families, and in the end we had 45 people, including 18 children (15 of whom were under the age of 6), and about 7 single young professionals. This organic farm was on Chongming Island, about an hour and a half from Shanghai, though with the holiday traffic that time was doubled. Their primary products are wheat and bean, and so they sell all kinds of flour, soy sauce, bean paste and black sesame, among other things.

Upon arrival, we made vegetarian dumplings and pita, and had a delicious organic and local vegetarian lunch, complemented by hummus and pesto. Then we took a walk of the farm and around the village, and picked some beans. The kids got to run around in nature and chalk the sidewalk with fat neon-colored chalk I had brought along. The adults got to chat and eat some healthy, delicious food. Then we walked around country roads rimmed with wild cotton plants, wearing big straw hats.

But these truly are stories best told in pictures.

 

Succah-Crawl in Shanghai

Our First Stop: Ben and RC's Succah

 

 

Our Second Stop: Rebecca Kanthor and Liu Jian's succah

 

 

 

Our group in Rebecca's succah

 

The Trip to the Farm

Making Dumplings

 

 

The Final Product
 

 

Having Lunch

 

 

Chalking 

 

 

 

A Walk around the Farm

 

 

 

In the Forest

 

 

 

Picking Beans

 

 



Shorashim

After a long break, I'm picking up the Shanghai-Jewish story again! Would love to read your comments :)

The Shanghai Jewish Center's Hebrew School has been through some serious structural changes this year. It is a sign of larger inclusion and tolerance, and an example of how communities should grow and change and flow as their members change as well. The two biggest changes are to offer a track for Israeli children who speak Hebrew, and also to accommodate for the growing number of pre-teens in the community.

I teach that group – the 11 to 14-year-olds, and I absolutely love it. I am doing a Shorashim (Roots) project with them, meant to explore their identities, their family background and their community and people. It is a project that all 12-13-year-olds do in schools in Israel and in many Diaspora communities. My co-teacher is French girl who is wonderful. Often we split up the group, so I teach the Hebrew and she teaches the English.

In developing the curriculum for the project, I began thinking about how these kids are going to talk about their lives, their families and their communities. Though I've taught Hebrew school often and in various countries, I've never taught a group of third or fourth-culture children, who are multilingual, very bright, international, well-traveled and still, at the end of the day, Jewish children (who don't naturally love going to Hebrew School). The group is incredibly diverse, with Israelis, Americans, French kids, half south-African, and of course, half-Chinese.

I feel like I am getting the opportunity to teach as I myself would have liked to have been taught. Though I (thankfully) had wonderful education throughout my life, there was always an element of me having to adapt to the local culture, as I wasn't really in it. There is a lot of value in this; it forces you, for example, to learn the language fluently and it makes you understand the local culture insanely well. Total immersion and you wind up with an insider's perspective.

But the downside is that the international part of your identity gets a bit downplayed. In something like a Shorashim project, which is inherently personal and individual – as it's about people's lives and identities – it's great to be able to understand, from first-hand experience, what these kids are going through.  Their questions about telling their life-story ("What if I moved six times?", "What if we just moved house in the same country?") are so unique to their experience, and I get it. I get them. I love it, because there aren't a lot of people like me my age, but there will be a lot of people like them by the time they're my age.

In a time when the world is becoming more globalized, more interconnected and diverse, when the meaning of Place is changing, and nationality often doesn't even begin to tell the story, it is time to think about how to adapt education and make it relevant to children who are growing up with a completely different kind of identity, one that is above all molded by exposure to international diversity, with all the languages, cultures and constant changes that that it involves.