Riverway Project Harvest Festival for 20’s and 30’s
Spirituality
By Andrew Oberstein, Coordinator for Social Justice and Young Adult Engagement
This fall, the Riverway Project community gathered in larger numbers than ever before, since our inception in 2001. We began our season with over 700 young adults who attended our ticketless High Holy Day services, and we culminated our season of gathering by returning to the roots of Sukkot. For the last three years, we have joined together with Ganei Beantown: Beantown Jewish Gardens to celebrate the holiday through delicious food and inspiring Jewish learning. This year, we focused on our local New England harvest and packed a full sukkah at our Sukkot Harvest Festival. The preparation for the harvest began over the summer when Temple Israel member, Riverway Project leader, and homebrewer extraordinaire, Aidan Ackerman, led a workshop on how to brew beer at home. We gathered in the Temple Israel kitchen for a discussion on beer in the Torah, followed by a hands-on brewing experience. Our beer, “Sukkot Sour 5776,” was brewed, bottled, and kept chilled until it was ready to be enjoyed under the sukkah. To celebrate the harvest, we first headed to local farms to find fresh fruits and vegetables to help make our festival dinner as mouthwatering as possible. Leora Mallach, Director of Ganei Beantown, worked closely with Riverway Project participants to divide up recipes and develop cooking team leaders. Then, on the evening of October 1, our kitchen was bustling with 20’s and 30’s: roasting spaghetti squash and zucchini, glazing carrots
in fresh maple syrup, carefully slicing red onions and mushrooms for our autumn quiche. With homemade beer ready to drink and homemade dinner ready to eat, 40 young adults headed outside to the Temple Israel sukkah. It was a cold night but our food and company kept us warm. In the sukkah, Rabbi Soffer led us in a text study and conversation about the significance of the booths in which we dwell. Among ancient and modern sources, we studied Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan who argued that “having the Israelites relive their Wilderness experience on the festival of Sukkot was bound to place them in a frame of mind which enabled them to detach themselves from the order of life which they had come to accept as normal and to view it critically.” Like the Israelites, we were placed in a new frame of mind in our sukkah, taking a step back to consider our own lives in the context of our busy urban society. As the rain began to fall and our night began to wrap up, we dug into our apple crisp, sipped warm tea and took turns shaking the lulav. We bade farewell to summer and ushered in our 15 year stronger than ever, dedicated to continue building community for young adults, connecting them to each other and to Judaism, through Temple Israel. Andrew Oberstein is the Coordinator for Social Justice & Young Adult Engagement at Temple Israel and can be reached at aoberstein@tisrael.org or 617-566-3960.
www.tisrael.org/insight | 617-566-3960
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