The holiday of Sukkot commemorates the makeshift huts that the Jewish people dwelled in for forty years in the desert. Alternatively, it’s the clouds of glory that protected the Jews during their travels. Either way, the idea is to spend time in the Sukkah, and take meals there throughout the eight-day festival.
Dear Friends,
A great tragedy has fallen on our community, Chabad and the entire Jewish people. On Monday, an entire family has been shattered, in a split second, as they were taking a Chol HaMoed trip in a remote area of Texas.
The father and sister were killed instantly in the car accident. The two remaining family members are in stable but serious condition in the hospital.
The family is long standing very involved members of the Houston Lubavitch community.
It wasn’t until Kasiah Weeks, 21, began her undergraduate studies at Arizona State University that she began to earnestly explore her Jewish identity.
“I grew up in a very small town where the Jewish population is very small; and there is only [a Reform] synagogue,” says Weeks, a global politics and foreign languages major originally from Las Cruces, New Mexico. “It wasn’t until I got to college that I even found out about Chabad.”
Since then, Chabad House at ASU, run by Rabbi Shmuel and Chana Tiechtel, has become Weeks’ Jewish lifeline. She attends Friday night dinners and lectures, and most recently discovered a new program that she says has changed her life: “Friday Light.”
4
