Sukkot In Israel

Well, I must say, all you have to do is spend one sukkot here and you know that we are really all suppose to be living here. I am not saying this in a preachy kind of way, more factual. Although, the day before sukkot was so heavy here the chag entered and life went on. We were invited to one of the ulpan teachers homes...Ilana. She lives near us and her son is friendly with Yonatan. They are a lovely family, very israeli really only our second invite to an Israeli home ( by the way there still has not been a shabbat without atleast one invite). They lent us their old sukkah, we did not want to invest in one until we are in our own home. Anyways, there sukkah was on their mirpeset and beautifully decorated with the art work of their seven children. Five of the seven were home. In the middle of the meal one of their sons begins singing and gets up and starts dancing around in the sukkah. He soon convinces his brother to join, then his father, then another brother and even Sara. It was really something else. The whole meal was in hebrew, Ilana tried to talk to the kids in English, but I can see that the boys are beginning to understand more and more.....not a lot but more. We had a lovely meal with lots of singing. You should see how these boys help their mother to serve and bring whatever is needed to the table! We definately see a difference in kids helping out here, hopefully it will rub off a little!
Around 8:00 the smaller kids quickly bentched and off they all went to the sukkah hop. We were getting ready to leave when Yarden showed up with a bottle of wine and his usual good humour. We sat back down, had some wine and laughed a lot , sang a little and headed home. Yarden and his kids would be sleeping over in our sukka tonight as they live at the top of the hill which is very, very exposed to the wind. We began walking home Chaim, myself, Sara, Yarden and his daughter Rifka. It was then that we heard the absolutely most beautiful singing you could imagine. What is that? We all froze to listen, is someone playing a CD?..impossible. We took a few more steps and heard it again...it wasn't coming from the Arab villages, sometimes we hear their weddings and music from their 'simchas'. We were walking closer to home and I pointed to a sukkah it's coming from in there. We were literally drawn into the sukkah, we happened to know the people who lived there but it would not have made any difference if we had not. We poked out heads in, Chag sameach...that is the most beautiful singing we have heard...chairs were brought in, come on in , I'm sorry to disturb you I say, but there was no resisting your singing. The Porath family has young adult and teenage children, they and their friends were sitting and singing. We stayed and listened to the melody and harmony, we sang along and sometimes just swayed to the beautiful songs. I looked around at these young adults and their parents and their parents friends....what a unique and special group of people. Two generations just hanging out together and singing! It was spectacular. Our younger girls were getting tired, we thanked everyone and were off again. We walked out of the sukkah and down the stairs in silence. When we hit the road Yarden said "This guys, is why we all moved to Israel". We looked around and saw the sukkots at every single house...some small, some big, some plastic, some cloth, some wood..it was a sight to behold.
We arrived home and got the mattresses and blankets into the sukkah. The singing continued as I tucked in Chaim, Yarden, Rivka and Sara. All the big kids were still out...I got ready for bed and climbed into bed, it was 11:00pm, I had no idea where Yonatan and David were and I was not in the least bit worried. It was bizarre, I really was not worried. They came in around 11:30 happy as could be. They had gone to some fun sukkot and collected some good junk. They went to the Rav's sukkah and of course the hirschorns and they listed off a few others....there are certain sukkot Ema that just everyone goes to. They climbed into the sukkah and quickly fell asleep. Wow, they never could have experienced it like this in Toronto. It was a wonderful chag and it was over in 24 hours or atleast the yom tov part of it. It felt right just being one day and while you are all in shul on second day , we will be out as a family (we don't work here on chol hamoed) on a tiyul with our yishuv. We will be going to some caves and to Herodian! we'll blog you about that later. Chag Sameach, moadim b'simcha