NORTHAMPTON — Celebrating in the hopes of an abundant fall, well over a hundred people gathered at Abundance Farm on Prospect Street to take part in the last day of Sukkot, a week-long Jewish holiday centered around the fall harvest, with food, community and rituals.
“Sukkot is known as a time of joy,” explained Rabbi and Abundance Farm Director Jacob Fine.
Sukkot comes toward the end of the High Holiday season after Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, according to Nili Simhai, education director of Abundance Farm. She said during the High Holidays, the focus is working on oneself and personal relationships. Sukkot is about asking for balance, in oneself and the world, for the next year.
“It’s my favorite holiday — and I love a lot of holidays,” she said.
It’s part ritual, part celebration, she said. “It’s a joyous harvest fest … but at the same time this is the moment we ask for blessings — for the health of the land and people on the land,” she explained.
People baked pizzas in a cob oven and ate stone soup — both with some ingredients from the farm — sipped on cider pressed from Park Hill Orchard apples and munched on falafel from the Holyoke Hummus food truck parked behind the synagogue. Kids played on a playground and in a large field next to the farm’s rows of crops. Some sat under the sukkah, a temporary hut where Jewish people celebrating the holiday spend time. Sukkot, a Hebrew word, translates to “booths” or “huts.”
Midway through the festival, most people gathered for a series of rituals and formed a circle. They touched the ground to give thanks to those who tended the farm’s land before they did.
Among other rituals, they walked in a circle and sang as musicians Aly Halpert, Anat Hochberg and Simcha Halpert-Hanson played.
Water was a central theme — like music lyrics about water and a story acted out about rain. In one ritual, for example, people poured cups of water into the earth to symbolize their faith that the water would come back again in the coming year.
“We are praying for ourselves and the world that there is a balance and right amount of rain,” Rabbi Fine said during the ceremony. Fine said the week of Sukkot is marked with prayers about rain and harvest.
“It’s like a Jewish water dance,” explained Rabbi Fine later said of the rituals.
Abundance Farm is a collaboration between Congregation B’nai Israel with the Northampton Survival Center and Lander-Grinspoon Academy, all three are clustered next to each other on Prospect Street. It serves as an outdoor classroom and advocates for food justice — some of the food grown goes to Northampton Survival Center’s food pantry next door.
“I love that it has a lot of nature, that it gets you in touch with the physical world,” said David Kieval said of the holiday as he pushed his 4-year-old son, Yoni, on the swing. Kieval is involved in the Jewish community, and Yoni is in preschool at the congregation. When asked mid-swing what his favorite part of the festival was, Yoni declared enthusiastically “swinging.”
Esther Roth-Katz is pretty new to the area, and her daughter is also in preschool at the congregation. She said she grew up celebrating Jewish holidays like Sukkot, but in a more rural area with less opportunity for events as large as this one. She noted she was happy to be able to celebrate the holiday with so many people.
It was 9-year-old Gabriella Dambrov’s first time celebrating the holiday, and after meeting other kids and pressing apple cider, she said she would do it again. “I really like playing wall ball, I liked singing songs and I liked the apple cider,” she said before running to her ongoing wall ball game.
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com.