Summoning the Sublime: Manifestations of Axis Mundi in the ‘Miracle Sukkah’ of the Bene Israel in Israel

• In Event: Images of Israeliness in Folk Culture (Hebrew)

Abstract

The sukkah, or Jewish ritual hut, in its practiced occupation is a Biblical proscription (Leviticus 23:42-43) which in fact dwells upon the liminal space of domus in transition (Jeffrey Rubenstein 1996). The sukkah has been treated as a symbolic axis-mundi, replacing the Holy Temple of Jerusalem as it connects heaven and earth, whilst concurrently highlighting the tension inherent between Jerusalem’s spiritual centrality and “the Sukkah as the concrete mode of celebrating the feast anywhere” (Galit Hasan-Rokem 2022). In recent years, the sukkah structure has also occupied an expressive role in contemporary North African immigrant protest against social terms of daily living in Israel (Gabrielle Anna Berlinger 2017).
The “Miracle Sukkah” is one such temporary ritual hut venerated by Indian-Israeli immigrants as a holy site, constructed yearly by a multi-generational, dynastic family, whilst attended and revered by community members at large who arrive on pilgrimage from the far reaches of the country and beyond. It presents a blend of intertextual, symbolic motifs culling from amongst the spectrum of traditions particular to the immigrant experience of the Bene Israel community from Mumbai and Maharashtra. This paper shall address the sukkah as a folk expression whilst exploring its multivalent miracle tales, the materiality and performative rituals of the cult, together activated to negotiate the community’s complex, painful transition from home to homeland through enactment and reenactment of a local axis mundi and a compelling alternative to Jerusalem for these Indian immigrants along Israel’s minority fringe.
“The Miracle Sukkah,” in its inherent Foucauldian heterotopia, offers a community incubator as it clears a space to explore the extent and limits of their transnational and multi-cultural identities, at once as proud Indians and as patriotic Israelis, ancient Bene Israels and contemporary Jews, laying the framework for a compelling alternative to the binary paradigm of Self-Other Judaism which lies at the very base of Zionism and greater Israeli identity.

Author

• Rishona Fine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem