For Future Generations

by Rachel Gutin

Of all the Jewish holidays, Sukkot was the hardest to celebrate in space. Rabbi Greenberg had been a young child when her family boarded the generation ship, but she still had vivid memories of celebrating Sukkot back on Earth. The swish-snap of the tall, skinny lulav as she shook it back and forth, its flat green leaves packed tightly against its spine. The tangy-sweet smell of the bumpy yellow etrog, a bit too round for her little hands to hold securely.

The sukkah that her family built behind their house every year, with its thin metal frame, and its canvas walls, and its ceiling of bamboo slats and cut branches. The pride she’d felt when her father finally allowed her to help him assemble it, collecting branches for the roof or fastening the ties that secured the walls. It let in the cold, the heat, the rain, but also the sunlight that dappled every surface as her family sat inside to eat together.

The acid tang in the air that last Sukkot, the way the colors looked all wrong, as the world began to die around them.

They boarded the ship a week later. They left the sukkah standing when they fled. There wasn’t any way to bring it with them. (Continue Reading…)