ABSTRACT
In the Jewish neighborhood next to which the author lived, the festival of Sukkot is beginning, the Feast of Booths, where Jews are commanded to build booths, or huts, and live in them for seven days in commemoration of their time of exile in the desert before entering the Promised Land. For seven days and nights, families will experience all over again the precariousness of desert nomadism. The first harvest of the fruit of the land, the first signs of their having found a home, was to be celebrated, as a commemoration of exile. The human condition of exile and inherent vulnerability to pain and tragedy can never be overcome. This chapter explores why the Israelites were summoned out of their prosperity every year, precisely around harvest time, to a celebration of exile. It explains why this memorial of exile and destitution within the very time of harvest, of homecoming and of prosperity.
