Welcoming Today’s Stranger on Sukkot
When I arrived at a small college in Pittsford, NY to undertake establishing the Konar Center for Tolerance and Jewish Studies, I had little idea the depth of care and concern on this campus already for issues of understanding, belief, culture, community and social justice. In seven short weeks I’ve learned there exists layer upon layer of serious commitment to such issues. And this commitment was exemplified this week at the Konar Center’s first initiative for the campus community.
In collaboration with other campus partners, the Konar Center created an event around the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, Welcoming Today’s Stranger. Having just celebrated the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), and undertaken the intense process of making amends and starting the new year with a clean slate (Yom Kippur), Jewish persons are asked to build Sukkahs, and to spend time having at least a meal in these temporary structures for eight days in a row. We are asked to leave the comfort of our own homes in order to remember what it is like to wander – to be in transition – to lack a home with any permanence. We are further asked to welcome the stranger. On most holidays including the weekly one of Shabbat, we eat with family and friends. On Sukkot, we are supposed to reach out to those who are disenfranchised, hungry, in transition, homeless.
The lessons of the Sukkot holiday are asking us to pause in our own comfort and stability - to take a deeper look at our surrounding community – and to invite someone in with the intention of providing both acknowledgment and at least a moment of relief - for someone who is struggling in that lack of permanence and absence of home. It is an intentional disruption to make us see what we may not notice most of the time.
The intention of Welcoming Today’s Stranger was to share a bit about Sukkot with a college community that knows little about Judaism, and also to put into practice this idea of opening doors to the disenfranchised. Four amazing individuals stepped forward to share their personal stories of transition and vulnerability. A member of the student government was one of these presenters, and she shared her wisdom. Coming to New York from the Dominican Republic, she found herself in a new country and a new culture. Her initial experience was uneasy, and it took time for her to learn to be herself, feel comfortable in her own skin, and to take it one step further and acknowledge that everyone who walks in the door has that same right – to feel comfortable and be welcomed. This young woman embraced her new surroundings by becoming involved, and makes it her mission to promote community and belonging here on campus.
Two dedicated Catholic clergy members and a college junior also shared their wisdom. They are all involved in helping the local migrant community – through improved communication, re-claiming of their own heritage, and developing self-confidence in addition to addressing basic needs. They implored us to understand the plight of this disenfranchised group, who are not seen, let alone welcome. It came to light that most of us only hear about the migrant community through television. We conflate the issues of immigration, migrants, refugees and in recent history, the highly exaggerated juxtaposition of crime and these communities. They explained that migrants are working hard to move from a state of transience to permanence in their new American home. They struggle with identity. They work on regaining pride and dignity which has been lost in their wandering.
The college student who presented is a Mexican-American who was born in and grew up in New York. She challenges the idea of ‘don’t talk to strangers’ as it relates to migrants who look different, speak different and appear as strangers to the rest of us. She spent time at the Mexican border and in Florida, helping to process migrants who were given court dates to appear in various locations throughout the U.S. Wandering without money and without the ability to communicate, this young woman volunteered to translate and to help migrants buy bus tickets and find ways – anyway – to make it cross-country for their court appointments.
There’s a story she shared, about an eight-year-old migrant boy who was being processed with his mother in Florida. She was helping them get acclimated. This young boy asked her if she had eaten lunch; it was 11 am, and she hadn’t, she told him. The boy asked her where her parents were – she told him they were in New York. And then he asked his mom if she could have lunch with them – since she was all alone. She tried to explain to him that she really wasn’t alone – that she lived in America and had come to help him and his mom. This young boy could not grasp that the woman he was speaking with – who looked and spoke like him - was actually American and actually okay. He didn’t understand her freedom of movement. Months later, this student volunteer has no way of knowing what happened to the boy and his mother. Are they settled? Have them been deported? Are they safe?
These volunteers shed light on real ways people experience the difficulties of transience. Sometimes I am asked why I am committed to my being Jewish – to understanding where I come from and to observing and absorbing some of today’s traditions and obligations. Welcoming Today’s Stranger is why. It is beyond me to always know how I can better contribute to the community. I would not have come up with the idea to disrupt my own life for eight days each year - in order to check my ego and remind myself that allowing others to go unseen and unassisted in their plight for the same things I have – is unacceptable. I am grateful for the lessons of the holidays of my tradition. These gems are found in so many traditions.
As we are taught through Sukkot observance, we must go out of our way for others. Those striving to be part of community and country deserve our attention. They deserve dignity. And it is the job of those already settled to help provide it.
Hava Leipzig Holzhauer, J.D.
Executive Director, Konar Center for Tolerance and Jewish Studies, Nazareth College
The lessons of the Sukkot holiday are asking us to pause in our own comfort and stability - to take a deeper look at our surrounding community – and to invite someone in with the intention of providing both acknowledgment and at least a moment of relief - for someone who is struggling in that lack of permanence and absence of home. It is an intentional disruption to make us see what we may not notice most of the time.
The intention of Welcoming Today’s Stranger was to share a bit about Sukkot with a college community that knows little about Judaism, and also to put into practice this idea of opening doors to the disenfranchised. Four amazing individuals stepped forward to share their personal stories of transition and vulnerability. A member of the student government was one of these presenters, and she shared her wisdom. Coming to New York from the Dominican Republic, she found herself in a new country and a new culture. Her initial experience was uneasy, and it took time for her to learn to be herself, feel comfortable in her own skin, and to take it one step further and acknowledge that everyone who walks in the door has that same right – to feel comfortable and be welcomed. This young woman embraced her new surroundings by becoming involved, and makes it her mission to promote community and belonging here on campus.
Two dedicated Catholic clergy members and a college junior also shared their wisdom. They are all involved in helping the local migrant community – through improved communication, re-claiming of their own heritage, and developing self-confidence in addition to addressing basic needs. They implored us to understand the plight of this disenfranchised group, who are not seen, let alone welcome. It came to light that most of us only hear about the migrant community through television. We conflate the issues of immigration, migrants, refugees and in recent history, the highly exaggerated juxtaposition of crime and these communities. They explained that migrants are working hard to move from a state of transience to permanence in their new American home. They struggle with identity. They work on regaining pride and dignity which has been lost in their wandering.
The college student who presented is a Mexican-American who was born in and grew up in New York. She challenges the idea of ‘don’t talk to strangers’ as it relates to migrants who look different, speak different and appear as strangers to the rest of us. She spent time at the Mexican border and in Florida, helping to process migrants who were given court dates to appear in various locations throughout the U.S. Wandering without money and without the ability to communicate, this young woman volunteered to translate and to help migrants buy bus tickets and find ways – anyway – to make it cross-country for their court appointments.
There’s a story she shared, about an eight-year-old migrant boy who was being processed with his mother in Florida. She was helping them get acclimated. This young boy asked her if she had eaten lunch; it was 11 am, and she hadn’t, she told him. The boy asked her where her parents were – she told him they were in New York. And then he asked his mom if she could have lunch with them – since she was all alone. She tried to explain to him that she really wasn’t alone – that she lived in America and had come to help him and his mom. This young boy could not grasp that the woman he was speaking with – who looked and spoke like him - was actually American and actually okay. He didn’t understand her freedom of movement. Months later, this student volunteer has no way of knowing what happened to the boy and his mother. Are they settled? Have them been deported? Are they safe?
These volunteers shed light on real ways people experience the difficulties of transience. Sometimes I am asked why I am committed to my being Jewish – to understanding where I come from and to observing and absorbing some of today’s traditions and obligations. Welcoming Today’s Stranger is why. It is beyond me to always know how I can better contribute to the community. I would not have come up with the idea to disrupt my own life for eight days each year - in order to check my ego and remind myself that allowing others to go unseen and unassisted in their plight for the same things I have – is unacceptable. I am grateful for the lessons of the holidays of my tradition. These gems are found in so many traditions.
As we are taught through Sukkot observance, we must go out of our way for others. Those striving to be part of community and country deserve our attention. They deserve dignity. And it is the job of those already settled to help provide it.
Hava Leipzig Holzhauer, J.D.Executive Director, Konar Center for Tolerance and Jewish Studies, Nazareth College