It was great to see so many people at the first annual Sukkot Family Harvest Festival!

Sukkot is a holiday of multiple names and meanings. Chag Ha’asif, the Festival of the Ingathering, is a celebration of the harvest. Since most of us are not currently farmers, we’re not building structures to camp out in our fields. We’re not exhausted from days of dawn to dusk physical labor with no time to head back to our permanent homes, while simultaneously guarding the remaining bounty in our fields from thieves. In our lives today, how do we make this component of the holiday relevant?

During autumn in New England, we celebrate and enjoy the local harvest season; we appreciate we have much to be grateful for. We acknowledge the divine elements to the bounty around us.

  We have so much to be grateful for:

• All 150 people who attended the first annual Beantown Sukkot Family Harvest Festival.
• The 250 pounds of carrots we harvested at the festival!
• Our tremendous educators: Rabbi Daniel Klein & Rabbi Ebn Leader, Amy May, Laura Evonne Steinman, Helen Bennett
• Our musical performers: Rakia Shemaya, Bethel Steele and the Klezwoods
• The JCC staff for providing decorations to decorate our Sukkah.
• Lands Sake Farm for hosting.
• Rabbi and Farmer Joseph Berman for all his work coordinating, and for co-sponsorship with his congregation Temple B’nai Israel of Revere.
• Hebrew College for their co-sponsorship.
• For the sun that shined upon us at the Festival.