Views from the Board
Supporting the Community

Interfaith Sukkah crawl



For the most meaningful gestures of interfaith, it helps to enlist a six year old who is an expert on etrogs.  

“Don't break the pitom!” my small son reprimanded the Anglican curates who had ventured into our Sukkah for the first leg of a Board of Deputies - Council of Christians and Jews Sukkah crawl in Edgware. 

Whereas most  interfaith events in neutral venues can often become a boring theological yawn, or a careful dance of leaving the touchy stuff carefully unsaid, my son happily ignored all protocol in bringing the ministers right into our family Sukkah and handing out the etrog with his dire warning.    

It got the evening off to the perfect start.   Many of the ministers had never been inside a Sukkah, never seen the living reality recorded in the Gospel of John of the feast of booths. And as for me, my family, and the other families who opened their homes and Sukkahs, it was the first time any of us had ever invited members of another faith so directly into that centre of Jewish life, the home.  Perhaps it was Sukkot, where we Jews live without doors, that allowed for the sometimes insular practices of the Jewish community to become accessible to another faith with warmth and honesty.  

It lead to some difficult moments of dialogue. One minister questioned why the Jews failed to take on Jesus as their saviour and messiah (“Because we believe that the messiah will heal a world that still lies broken”, I answered, which my three year old very effectively illustrated by spilling soup over the guests).

Despite, or perhaps because of, the difficult moments, the event touched all those who sat within the fragile walls of the Sukkah.  

As Revd Sharon Roberts of the Oxford Diocese reflected, “We have such wisdom and illumination to discover through respectful dialogue with each other and through deep listening, and it was a particular joy to me that all this took place at the very heart of family life.  I was hugely moved by the hospitality shown as we journeyed through the evening.”  

The Anglican curates were lead by Rev David Gifford, Chief Executive of the Council for Christians and Jews.