Welcoming ‘exalted guests’ into our sukkah

We are fortunate that our home on the upper slopes of Mount Carmel includes a large terrace, overlooking not only Haifa, but also the hills of the Galilee up to the northern border with Lebanon. It is an ideal place on which to erect our sukkah.

But what makes our sukkah truly unique are the guests that we entertain there. No, not the usual family, neighbors and friends, but those individuals whom we select out of the news and from the pages of history. If Elijah could pay so many visits to Passover seders on one night, our special guests can spend an hour or two with us. There is so much we can talk about.

And so, in accordance with our annual custom, we extend the traditional Ushpizin invitation — "Enter, exalted holy guests" — to a selected list of personalities with whom we have much to discuss.

First will be Naomi Shemer, Israel's song composer laureate, who died this past year. We had corresponded with her but had never met her in person. Did she realize the full extent of the influence her songs have had on this generation? We have heard cases of Jews from Russia who were so influenced by her "Jerusalem of Gold" that they came on aliyah. How did ideas for words and music come to her? Was it sudden inspiration or did she ponder ideas for a long time? What an interesting account she could give us, warranting a full evening under the palm fronds of our sukkah.

Another evening we are inviting Richard Gottheil. He was president of the Federation of American Zionists in the time of Theodor Herzl, more than 100 years ago. Gottheil sought to mobilize the Jews of America in support of the radical idea to re-establish the Jewish state. What were his experiences? Was there opposition? Support? He carried on an extensive correspondence with Herzl, and the files were inherited by his sister-in-law, Eva Leon. When we made aliyah in 1952 she presented us with the file of Herzl letters. What fascinating reading! We had many of them translated by Ludwig Lewisohn into English from Herzl's German and contributed the entire collection to the Zionist Archives in Jerusalem.

Our next guest may be difficult to locate. We don't know his name. He has never been to Israel, and that's the point. He is the fearful American Jew who has never visited here. We should like to show him the country as we have seen it during these many years, with its virtues and its flaws. Will one evening suffice to tell him the story and stimulate his sense of pride and personal identification with Israel? We should like to try.

We shall get into politics on the next night when our guest will be Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. Will he have satisfactory answers to all the questions we are lining up for him? How could a man who has obvious ambitions to succeed Sharon as prime minister have been foolish enough to accept interim appointment as minister of finance? In the latter post, where he is expected to cut budgets and save government money, he is bound to incur the wrath of government employees and all the lower economic classes who are such a large percentage of the electorate. Yet, if his economic program does succeed, his election may be assured. His views on the Arab problem do not always command support. We shall afford him ample opportunity to expound his political philosophy.

For our next guest we go to the Bible. It will be recalled that the prophet Elisha had been befriended by a Shunnamite woman. Later he learned that her only son had died and all attempts at revival had failed. As the Scripture tells us, Elisha "lay upon the child and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes and his hands upon his hands, and he stretched himself upon him; and the flesh of the child waxed warm ... and the child sneezed seven times and the child opened his eyes." This is the first recorded instance of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which has become such a common life-saving procedure in our day. Perhaps Elisha can give us more medical advice.

We shall close with a quiet dinner at which the guest will be my brother, Sumner, who died earlier this year. He was more than nine years younger than me, and I often felt a paternal relationship to him. He lived in California, and we saw him only when we visited there or when he made frequent visits to Israel. We kept in close touch through e-mail. On this last visit we can reminisce about our boyhood experiences in Boston. How I envied him his talents, which found expression in a successful career as an engineer. I often used to say that when the Technion Institute invited me to Haifa, they really thought they were getting Sumner.

Enough. There is food for thought here that will last us for many weeks. More possible guests? Come around next year.




Carl Alpert is a freelance writer and columnist in Israel.