Alef: The NEXT Conversation

21: Places and Spaces

Issue 21: Places and Spaces
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At 6:36 pm last Wednesday, Jews around the world sat in temporary structures of varying shapes and sizes to celebrate the start of the holiday of Sukkot. These structures – sukkot (plural for sukkah) – are symbols of both shelter and impermanence, representing the huts our Israelite ancestors slept in for the forty years of their desert wanderings.

Which brings us to the concept of PLACE. While a quick Google search for the old Anti-Semitic canard of the “Wandering Jew” yields about 457,000 hits, there remains a strong association of “Jewish” and “permanence”. Whether it’s communal institutions like synagogues and Jewish day schools, or larger communities like “the Jews of North America” or even (depending on how you define it) the state of Israel, the idea of a permanent Jewish “place” is one has permeated the modern Jewish world.

And yet, as communities become more and more global, we find ourselves becoming more and more transient in response. With these shifts, the question of where we are Jewish becomes a little less answerable. Do we still have to be in a synagogue to pray? At a yeshiva to learn? If we’re not card-carrying members of a Jewish Community Center, are we really part of the Jewish community? What about a community like “Brooklyn Jews” (a congregation in Brooklyn, New York)?  They held this year’s High Holiday services in a picnic house at a local park. Is that a “Jewish” place?

This issue’s writers don’t claim to have the answer to any of these questions either, but they start by offering a few suggestions and adding their own two cents to the conversation.

Places and Spaces Posts:
“I Will Survive in Auschwitz”
We Lived Here Before
Sukkah City
What Makes A Space?
The Florentine Synagogue
Outside the Walls
A New Place
Tel Aviv in Photos
Temple or Tabernacle?

Photo by bazylek100, licensed under Creative Commons.

Tags: geography, jewish, sukkot

Posted by Sarah, Monday, September 27th, 2010, 4:21 pm, Places and Spaces.