Sukkat Shalom: Between Slavery and Liberation

By Miriam Grossman and Jill Zenoff

Take part in JCUA’s Sukkot Action for Justice, during Sukkot, on Oct. 11. At the Mortgage Bankers Association meeting, we’ll be calling attention to how the foreclosure crisis is affecting Chicago families. Learn more and register for the event.

At the beginning of their journey from slavery to liberation, the Israelites found themselves displaced from their homes with little to no forewarning. Scrounging what supplies that could be found and only enough food and water to last a few days, they constructed sukkot, temporary shelters made from sticks and twigs, in which they would dwell.

Unable to see beyond their past circumstance towards the promised land, when their food and water supplies ran out, many were ready to return to Egypt. The inhumanity and brutality of slavery seemed a fair exchange for what passed as food and housing security.

It wasn’t until the Israelites became a food-secure people with the miraculous appearance of mana at morning’s dew and water from Miriam’s well, were they ready to continue on their 40-year journey towards freedom.

Sukkot Action for Housing Justice: Oct. 11

This graphic banner will be used in the portable Sukkah at the housing action day.

With American bankers meeting just feet away next week, Chicagoans will share stories about how the economic crisis has affected them.

It all happens on Tuesday, Oct. 11, at a special interfaith Sukkot action and press conference inside a makeshift Sukkah in front of the Hyatt Regency in downtown Chicago.

Representing shelter in a time of wandering and crisis, or the halfway point between slavery and liberation, this may be the first time a portable Sukkah has been used in a protest action.