Members of the University of Southern California’s Hillel chapter gathered in high spirits on the second night of the Jewish holiday, Sukkot, which fell on Tuesday, October 7–the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.
USC Hillel let Annenberg Media inside their event briefly.
In celebration of the Jewish holiday, the Hillel building was decorated with a multitude of flowers, candles, and tributes to the lives lost during the attack, as well as posters calling for the return home of hostages taken during the attack.
Sukkot is an eight-day harvest festival that directly follows the celebrated nine days in the diaspora, serving as a counterbalance to the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Contrasting the ‘spiritual intensity’ that the High Holidays bring, Sukkot starts on a full moon, on October 6 this year, which in the Jewish religion, represents a festival of abundance.
“Jewish history is lived in. Every single year, people do this,” USC Rabbi Jocee Hudson said.
Hudson added that the holiday represents a persistent joy, which emerges from grief and struggle, and represents the unity of a community.
“It is the feeling of gratitude mixed with love mixed with happiness, knowing what it feels like to grieve and coming out of it,” Hudson said. “We gather here today, this is like emphatic joy. It’s not a joy that is hollow or dismissive. It is a joy that encompasses it all.”
This year, the second night of Sukkot fell on the two-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks.
“The holiday commands us to be celebratory and happy, and so it’s very hard to hold both the Jewish holiday and also the pain of October 7,” USC Hillel Executive Vice President Carmel Schwartz said.
Rabbi Hudson emphasized the sentiments regarding this year’s celebration.
“It’s the only Jewish holiday that you’re commanded to be happy on,” Hudson said. “Which is one of the reasons why, as it falls on October 7 this year, there’s a religious challenge into how it is that we would observe this day and the one holiday that you’re commanded to be joyful.”
President of the USC Hillel Tzedek Committee Isabella-Marie Selden said she saw Sukkot as a way to gather with friends and family while celebrating life and honoring the victims from the October 7 attacks.
“It’s definitely a dichotomy where we are supposed to be happy and together, but there’s a lot of war and hurt that’s going on in the world,” Selden said. “For me, this day is a day to celebrate life with my friends and be happy while also recognizing that there’s a lot of negative stuff in this world and that there’s a lot that we can do as people, as an institution, to help change that.”
Schwartz echoed the importance of Sukkot as a time to gather with family and find community.
“[It’s a time to] spend the week together in the same space, invite people into your sukkah,” Schwartz said.
Hudson, who also serves as the senior Jewish educator at USC Hillel, explained the significance of two of the main Sukkot ritual elements: the lulav, a palm frond, and the etrog, a citron fruit.
“When you hold them and you shake them, it’s the idea of so many different spiritual ways to understand it,” Hudson said. “We’re surrounded in all ways by the divine. We’re imbued with the divine and surrounded by the divine.”
These symbols have ancient roots in the holiday and represent a multitude of different interpretations, which are meant to symbolize the connection between the earth and its inhabitants.
It’s all elements of the Jewish world, interconnected,” Hudson said. “All of creation, interconnected, our connection to the land.”