People immediately pointed out that the "sukkah" was built under a tree, invalidating it - a sukkah must be under the sky.
Others noted that there was apparently no "schach" roof covering, but this photo was taken while it was being constructed. They did build a roof - but it wouldn't be valid either since it doesn't cover the required percentage of area.
The students from JVP and other organizations pretended that they were doing this for religious purposes. “With Columbia’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace still unjustly suspended by the University, anti-Zionist students struggle to access space for Shabbat services and other religious programming,” they said. Building a non-kosher sukkah sort of proves that this is all a lie.
And they freely admit that they are twisting religion for political purposes. They handed out flyers with a prominent quote from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, saying “Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods." However, in that same 1969 essay, Heschel said,
A great mystery has become a reality in our own days, as God’s response to a people’s prayer. After nearly two thousand years the city of David, the city of Jerusalem, is now restored to the people of Israel. This marvellous event proclaims a call for the renewal of worship, for the revival of prayer. We did not enter the city of Jerusalem on our own in 1967. Streams of endless craving, endless praying, clinging, dreaming, day and night, midnights, years, decades, centuries, millenia, streams of tears, pledging, waiting—from all over the world, from all comers of the earth, carried us of this generation to the Wall, to the city of Jerusalem.
I don't think they will be quoting those words.
Sukkot is a pilgrimage festival where Jews would travel to the Temple in Jerusalem. You simply cannot separate Sukkot from the Jewish people's deep attachment to Israel.
Similarly, they placed pictures of the seven species on the "sukkah" - seven species of the Land of Israel.
While it is humorous to see such ignorance and hypocrisy, the haters' blatant attempts to subvert Jewish rituals to attack basic Jewish concepts is thoroughly offensive and disgusting.
But at Northwestern University, they made it even worse.
The university repeatedly warned JVP that the sukkah they planned to build was a violation of policy, since JVP is not a registered student group and the sukkah did not adhere to their display guidelines. They built it anyway. When the university took it down, the hypocrites claimed that the university was antisemitic!
%20%E2%80%A2%20Instagram%20photos%20a_%20-%20www.instagram.com.png)
By pretending that this was an antisemitic attack on their beliefs, JVP is attempting to trivialize the actual antisemitism happening on campus for Jewish students who really cannot freely walk around campus without being harassed by these fake Jews and their pro-terrorist partners.
Their false claims that they are simply wanting to perform Jewish rituals endangers real Jews doing real Jewish rituals. There have been hundreds of instances where synagogues and other Jewish spaces have been protested and targeted - including violently - throughout the world over the past year.
By pretending that they are the victims, not the perpetrators, of antisemitism, they are deliberately creating an environment where antisemitism can flourish and where real Jews are afraid.
Which is the entire point.
