Ahavat Olam

Everyone is warmly invited to a Virtual Zoom Sukkah / Shabbat session on Friday evening, September 24, at 5:00pm Pacific Time. Please join us if you can! If you would like to join and haven’t received the Zoom invitation, please contact info@ahavat-olam.ca and we’ll send you the information you’ll need to log in.

It’s customary during Sukkot to invite Ushpizin — ancestors and other divine guests — to join us in the Sukkah (https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/ushpizin-welcoming-guests/). Traditionally we invoke the names of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David. In more recent decades the custom has evolved to include matriarchs and other sage and heroic women from our heritage: popular choices include Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Miriam, Hannah, Devorah, Abigail, and Esther. We’d like to offer a time for participants to think about and mention an ancestor or other important figure in their own lives.

If you’re able to join us from your own sukkah, great! It will give others in the Zoom session a chance to share a virtual taste of that experience. (I’ll be in my sukkah but my internet will be dodgy, so sharing video will be uncertain.) If you happen to have a lulav and etrog available, also great! We’ll be able to share in the mitzvah of gathering and waving the Four Species (https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/lulav-and-etrog-the-four-species/).

There are several of us in our community who are grieving a recent loss or observing a loved one’s yartzayt at this time. If you can, please help us make a minyan for anyone who needs to say Kaddish.

https://www.facebook.com/events/187426220140474/