Notes from Cantor Avima

 If I had a camera on the second day of Sukkot, I would have taken a picture of a sanctuary filled with children and parents from our Religious School. I would have taken a picture of our cute K-grade 3 students proudly holding silver torah crowns and breastplates and marching around the sanctuary when we took out the Torah. I would have taken a picture of the older Religious School students marching around the sanctuary with lulavim and etrogim singing Hoshanot. I would have also taken alot of pictures of our children sitting in the sukkah making edible sukkot out of graham crackers, marshmallow fluff and pretzels, and of course their sticky hands and happy smiles as they ate their edible sukkot. I also would have taken pictures of the parents socializing while we all ate pizza and enjoyed a beautiful, sun soaked day. 

     And all of those pictures that I only took mentally, will join my mental Sukkot photobook, the one where I store pictures of all the sukkot of my youth and adulthood from my family sukkot to the congregational sukkot through the years. I love the colors of Sukkot, the hues of orange and yellow and brown. I love the melodies of sukkot, from the majestic melody that we sing as we wave the lulav in six directions to the almost plaintiff melody of chanting the poetry of Hoshanot and the joyful melodies of Hallel. I celebrated becoming a bat mitzvah at the end of Sukkot, on the evening of Shemini Atzeret -(since my synagogue was about two years away from allowing b'not mitzvah to celebrate at a morning service and read from the Torah). The bima was decorated with a cornucopia of pumpkins, corn stalks, squash and gourds. I have many memories and mental pictures and this year, I have added a few more to the album. 

     I am looking forward to Simchat Torah, when again, I hope our sanctuary will be filled with children waving flags and eating candy apples and we will all celebrate as a community with our homegrown mitzvah band. See you Sunday morning Oct. 8!