New City Residents Take Part in Sukkot Celebration in Store’s Parking Lot

New City, NY — For Marilyn Fried of Spring Valley, shopping never felt so good.

Fried was entering the ShopRite supermarket in New City yesterday morning when she was approached by Rabbi Yisroel Goldberg, who asked if she’d like to “shake the lulav.”

She was delighted to accept the invitation and beamed as she waved the lulav and the etrog to all the corners of the earth.

The lulav, a bundle of palm fronds with myrtle and willow branches, and etrog, which is a citron, are integral to the celebration of the joyous Jewish holiday known as Sukkot.

The seven-day celebration that starts five days after Yom Kippur is a remembrance of the desert wanderings of the Israelites after they were taken out of slavery in Egypt. It also is a celebration of the fall harvest.

Sukkot, which began Saturday, is marked with festivities and synagogue services. Many observant Jews build temporary outdoor huts – called sukkahs – and eat, sleep and pray in the structures to commemorate how the Israelites lived for 40 years after leaving Egypt.

While Goldberg offered holiday wishes to all passers-by and the opportunity to perform the rite of Jewish faith, the mobile sukkah he had parked in the nearby lot drew curious stares.

Goldberg, director of community outreach and the Hebrew school at Chabad of Rockland in New City, explained that the 5-foot by 10-foot wooden structure he’d helped build was meant to help people observe Sukkot traditions.

“Some people can’t make it to a sukkah, so if you can’t bring people to the sukkah, bring the sukkah to people,” he said.

The mobile sukkah has been traveling around Rockland since Monday, and will continue making stops across the county until Friday. People will have the opportunity to enter the structure and have a meal, as Jewish custom requires.

While many people were content to look at the sukkah yesterday, several others were eager to perform the waving ceremony.

“Hello, ma’am. Would you like to shake the lulav?” Goldberg asked Elaine Wild. The New City woman was only too happy to oblige.

Goldberg handed her the lulav, then the etrog, and led her through the Hebrew blessing while she shook the bundle up, down, to the front and back, and from left to right.

“I’m so glad I saw you,” Wild told Goldberg, staying to chat with him for about 10 minutes.

As she prepared to go into the supermarket to shop, she said she was “very happy” at having performed the ritual.

“I’m a very spiritual person, not so much religious, but very spiritual,” she said, “and I do feel very Jewish … even though I’m not observant.

Fried, who lives in Spring Valley, said she too wasn’t very observan, but that she welcomed the opportunity to connect to her religion.

”I think it’s wonderful,“ she said. ”When my children were growing up, they went to Hebrew schools, but then as they moved out of the house, I sort of grew lax. But God is in my heart always.“

Steven and Sarah Kaplan, a father and daughter from New City, both seized the opportunity to shake the lulav and etrog.

”Unless he was standing there, we probably wouldn’t have done it,“ Steven Kaplan said of Goldberg.

Chabad also has celebrations scheduled at its New City facility.

”People look forward to a joyous time of the year,“ Goldberg said, ”and when they see that we’re coming around, and there’s music and singing and dancing, and food, of course, they come out and they appreciate it.”