After Yom Kippur, Sukkot
provides an opportunity
shifting paradigms in what
become for the community
locations, where without a roof
Jews change for seven days world-views.
In sky-view sukkahs, not rain-proof,
commanded to rejoice, we choose
to act like ancestors who dwelt
within a wilderness wasteland,
our homes the sort of glatt greenbelt
kosher ecologists demand,
as if we make apology
for climate violations we
had just confessed, ecology
all driving, unelectrically,
after fasting and petitioning
a pardon from God: Yom Kippur,
replacing air-conditioning
for outside air, we pray more pure.
The word glatt is Yiddish for “smooth” and refers to the lungs of kosher ruminants, implying that their meat has been processed according to the strictest standards of kashrut, Jewish dietary laws. By writing in the third verse of this poem that sukkot – temporary, roofless dwellings – make Jewish homes as glatt kosher as a greenbelt (land in England which may not be developed) my rumination implies that sukkot enable Jews to breathe air that is not only halakhically correct but also PC, as Pulmonologically Correct as meat of glatt kosher animals.
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
