JWA chats with sociology professor and author Helen Kim.

Sukkot is an urgent reminder not to take our land for granted.

On Sukkot, we traditionally invite guests into our sukkahs. How can we fulfill this ritual during a pandemic?

Stuffed foods are traditional for Sukkot, and represent a time of plenty. This immediately made me want to tackle a stuffed pepper situation. Stuffed peppers are great because it allows you to basically put together all your favorite vegetables in unusually fancy packaging.

So, my journey from New York to Texas has resulted in my viewing myself as a bicultural Jew: I have had the luxury and privilege of taking Jewishness for granted and I also know the depths of Jewish illiteracy and intolerance that plague parts of the country and some institutions of higher education.

Hi Everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful Rosh Hashanah, a meaningful Yom Kippur, and an easy fast. And next in the annual fall marathon of Jewish holidays, I hope you have a great Sukkot. In honor of this holiday, filled with stuffed foods and fall vegetables, I’ve put together a recipe for pumpkin spice rugelach.

Though the conclusion of Sukkot occurred earlier this week, our friends at JOFA co-manifested such a milestone event with such potential, far reaching effects, we wanted to share this happening

There is a simple beauty to the holiday ofSukkot, perhaps because it is thechag (holiday) with the leastmeshugas (craziness). The Day of Atonement and the month of weighty reflection are behind us, the manic celebration of Simchas Torah lies ahead. Sukkot, often called The Festival of Ingathering, is unadorned, honest, at peace with itself.

And it reminds me of Lady Gaga.

Though I would not use the term “unadorned” to describe her inspired ensembles, she is unadorned when it comes to her character, honest when it comes to her spirit, at peace when it comes to her personhood. And she invites, nay demands, through her songs, performances, interviews, and her anti-bullying campaigns that others strive for the same.

As far as underrated vegetables go, cabbage is near the top of the list. People generally don't rhapsodize over cabbage like they do for fresh sweet corn or a juicy red tomato.

Act out, throughtableaux vivants, the ways Jews took what they had learned from the Civil Rights Movement and other liberation movements and used these insights to change the Jewish community.

According to halakhah, women are responsible for obeying all of Judaism’s negative commandments and for observing most of the positive ones, including the Sabbath and all of the festivals and holy days of the Jewish year. In some instances, however, male and female obligations on these days differ.

Leah Bergstein was the first of the choreographers in Palestine who, at the beginning of the 1930s, created festival dances at kibbutzim that depicted life in pre-state Israel and on agricultural settlements. The unique festival pageants she created, often with poet-composer Mattityahu Shelem, contributed to the development of rural Israeli festivals and holiday celebrations and the creation of the first Israeli dances.

Sukkot is my favorite Jewish holiday. I like a good harvest bounty; I like that I can share meals with friends not in my kitchen; I like that I can eat while meditating on stars peeking through a canopy of colorful paper chains, laquered gourds, and chili pepper lights (which always adorned my family’s sukkah). In preparation for Sukkot (just a few hours away!), I've been thinking about other, more provocative, sukkah decor that might be inside the sukkot in which I eat.