Paper Short Abstract:

The “Miracle Sukkah” is a temporary ritual hut revered as sacred place among Bene Israel Indian-Israeli immigrants. This paper explores how transience of place invites a minority, fringe immigrant community to surmount the complex transition from home to homeland by reinterpreting space, offering promise in an alternative to Jerusalem’s axis mundi.

Paper Abstract:

The “Miracle Sukkah” of Ashdod, Israel is an extraordinary iteration of the temporary Jewish ritual hut, revered by members of the immigrant community of Indian Jews known as the Bene Israel. Throughout the Sukkot festival, devotees arrive from the far corners of the country and beyond to the modest sukkah built within a void space among the urban landscape, in the tiny garden of a dilapidated immigrant housing project, to engage in a singular vernacular cult deeply rooted in the Bene Israel Indian-Israeli experience. Miracle tales spread by word of mouth among Bene Israelis draw them on a sojourn to the sukkah in search of salvation, a life partner and fertility blessing promised by the numerous tales that circulate. The rich literary folk tradition alongside the extraordinary ritual performance peculiar to the “Miracle Sukkah’s” pilgrim community together define the sukkah as a Tuanian place - a pause in time and a space endowed with value. The “Miracle Sukkah” as a cosmic axis, at once challenges the hegemony represented in Jerusalem whilst essentially establishing itself as a holy site along a pilgrimage route peculiar to the Bene Israelis who, from a distant development town, may embark upon a journey to the sukkah, and then continue to other mainstream holy sites. This paper explores the very transience of the “Miracle Sukkah” as it facilitates return to Bachelard’s oneiric house of birth whilst establishing an Arendtian “space of appearance”, creating hope, dream and possibility for a quiet community along Israel’s minority fringe.