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Jerusalem, September 17 - A group of Jews concerned for the welfare of the elderly guests who visit each temporary residence during the upcoming Sukkot holiday launched a drive today to raise awareness of the need to don a protective face covering in the presence of others, with the goal of having those ancient visitors sport such coverings to reduce the risk of contracting a virus that disproportionately harms the aged.
The Union for the Safety of the Holy Patriarchs of Israel and Zion and to Interdict Negligence (USHPIZIN) embarked on a publicity campaign Thursday to reach Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and David, the seven visitors who come to each person's sukkah on the seven respective days of the festival. The youngest of the group, David, is more than three thousand years old, placing him and the others firmly in a high-risk group for coronavirus infection and fatality.
Those formative seven figures of Jewish lore each represent a different personality and set of attributes manifest in the world, but USHPIZIN coordinator R. Baminim warned that unless sukkah-dwellers adhere to social distancing protocols and keep their own masks on in the presence of the venerable guests, observers of the weeklong annual ritual court disaster, or might dissuade the seven from visiting them.
"The seven-day Sukkot festival is a time to experience deepening levels of spiritual consciousness, each one building on the one before, as represented by one of the Ushpizin," he stated, using the Latin-derived term for the seven guests, from a term that later gave English the words "hospice" and "hospitality." "But that can't happen if our father Abraham is laid up in Intensive Care because some inconsiderate dodo got careless. We're also concerned that, despite their advanced age, the seven Ushpizin might be carrying the pathogen, and could transmit it far and wide even as most of the population maintains the lockdown that the authorities have imposed for everyone's protection."
Sukkot, the Biblically-mandated Feast of Booths, or "Tabernacles" as older translations render it, requires adult male Jews to reside in a structure with a makeshift, porous ceiling, for seven days beginning on the fifteenth of the month of Tishrei. The shift from a permanent residence into a semi-exposed "home" highlights, inter alia, human dependence on divine providence, and the freedom that realization engenders can in turn open a person to more profound insight and character refinement as represented by each of the seven Ushpizin, assuming he doesn't kill them with some contagious disease.