Every autumn since my marriage to an ethnic Chinese man,
I had celebrated the holiday of the 5,000-year-old culture whose
people gather on the 15th of Tishri to reenact an
important historic event while enjoying the harvest moon. But
although the 15th of Tishri is the first day of Sukkot,
these people are not Jewish and the holiday celebrated is not
Sukkot. It is the Chinese Moon Festival, or Mid-Autumn Festival,
that is celebrated throughout the sphere of Chinese cultural
influence, from Vietnam to Japan. Not having grown up in a family
of Sukkot-celebrators, it took several years before I realized
that the Asian holiday coincided with a holiday of my own people.
I have found that selectively borrowing from the Moon Festival can
draw us back to the agricultural roots of Sukkot, to appreciate
better the Creator of nature, and fulfill our need for connection
with other peoples. But juxtaposing these two different full-moon
holidays also confirms for me the distinctiveness of the Jewish
people and our ethical mission.
The traditional calendars of both Chinese and
Jews are lunar calendars. Two years out of three, Sukkot, on the
15th day of the Hebrew month of Tishri, coincides with
the Moon Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth moon
of the Chinese year. This is the time of year when the moon
appears brightest in the night sky, a fact of which both festivals
take advantage by being held out-of-doors.
This past Sukkot my children and I huddled close in
our sukkah. I started by telling them the Chinese folktales of the
season: How the rabbit-in-the-moon pounds an elixir of immortality with
mortar and pestle under a grove of cassia trees. How WuGang the woodcutter
was sentenced by the Jade Emperor to cut down a cassia tree but every time
he completed an ax cut, the bark sealed itself. How Lady Chang-eh became
the moon lady in a palace built from cassia trees after her husband, HouYi,
the master archer of the skies, was given a magic elixir of immortality by
Mother of the West, who gave it to HouYi after he shot down nine of the 10
suns that appeared one day and threatened life on earth.
Then I moved on to the Jewish tales – that it was oil
from cassia trees that Aaron used to anoint the tabernacle that held the
Torah when the Israelites dwelled in sukkot like these. It is
cinnamon, or cassia bark, that is one of the scents traditionally used for
havdallah.
Some traditional-style Chinese homes or teahouses
place seven grasses in a vase next to a neatly arranged tray of white rice
balls. The moonlight dances off the silken tassles of the grasses and
lends the rice balls a pale luminescence. There is more than hint of our
own tall lulav and round etrog in the silhouette of this
nocturnal still-life.
Then there is the story behind why mooncakes, the
traditional round pastry eaten for the Moon Festival, all have pieces of
paper baked into them, placed under them, or attached to the box in which
they are delivered. It is said that long ago Chinese hid pieces of paper
in mooncakes with the secret message containing the time to begin a revolt
against their Mongolian overlords. It brings to mind a story from our own
Jewish past when the Maccabees were too busy fighting their Syrian
overlords to celebrate Sukkot on time. Only when victory was declared and
the ner tamid relit were they able to celebrate the eight days of
Sukkot. That Sukkot-out-of-season was the historical inspiration for the
eight days of Hanukkah.
As the moon grew higher and the leaves of the trees
began to stir, I was reminded of the ghost stories that haunted the
backyard campouts of my childhood. The stage was set for some Yiddish
ghost stories. The Demon and the Willows tells how a man uses a lulav
to drive away a she-devil. The Vanished Bridegroom is a Rip Van
Winkle-like story with a Chinese counterpart. On the day before his
wedding, a Jewish bridegroom is met by his long-dead childhood Torah study
partner. He agrees to go study some gemara together for old times
sake. But when the bridegroom returns home afterward, he finds 150 years
have passed. In China there is said to be a mountain cave where
Yuexialaoye the matchmaker of earthly marriages plays chess with the god
of longevity. If you stop to watch, you’ll find many years have passed
upon returning home.
By now we had given ourselves goosebumps and decided
to use the old standby for warding off ghosts: the Shema. (There is
a brief passage in Talmud [B. Meg 3a] that advises us to recite the
Shema to overcome fear. Also, “the practice of reciting the Shema
at bedtime is connected with the fear of demons” [Encyclopedia Judaica,
vol. 14, col. 1373].) This prayer to the one God reminded us just in time
that there are no goblins or other gods. It also gave me a quick thought.
For Chinese people with a literary bent, one prelude to enjoying the
harvest moon was to admire a fragment of scripture or a seasonal poem on a
beautiful calligraphy scroll. For both Chinese and Jews, calligraphy has
been a highly developed decorative art that nears the borders of abstract
art. In this spirit, but falling far short of any artistic standards, we
wrote out the Shema and taped it to our sukkah just to make
double-sure there were no uninvited unearthly guests.
We did, on the other hand, want the invited guests,
the ushpizzin: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and
David. A 16th-century mystic, Rabbi Isaac Luria, said each of
these men represented one of the s’phirot, or aspects of God, that
are part of the created world. They are: chesed, loving-kindness;
gevurah, severity or strength; tiferet, beauty; netzach,
victory; hod, glory; yesod, intimacy; and malchut,
majesty. They are mirrored in the Chinese Five Good Characteristics: long
life; wealth; peace; virtue; and honor.
Both traditions value and try to embody “family
harmony” during these two moon holidays. Jews express “family harmony” as
shalom bayit. Shalom is related to the word shalem,
meaning whole or complete. Chinese express family harmony in the form of a
circle because its roundness looks whole and complete. The full moon is
the perfect celestial embodiment of their ideal.
But if we play with the Chinese emphasis on the
number five we begin to see the underlying difference between Sukkot
and the Moon Festival. The Five Good Characteristics, mentioned above, and
other sets of five like the Five Flavors (sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and
hot), the Five Colors (green, red, yellow, white, and black), or the Five
Directions, correspond with the Five Elements in Chinese cosmology – wood,
fire earth, metal and water – which embody the Chinese idea of a cyclical
process to life. Wood is pounded by metal; metal is melted by fire; fire
is snuffed by water; water is soaked up by earth; earth is beaten by wood;
wood is pounded by metal; and on and on in a continuous circle.
By now you’re probably reminded of the Passover song,
“Chad Gadya/Only One Kid.” But the Jewish cosmology does not circle
round like the Chinese one does. “Chad Gadya” spirals from the lamb, up
past the angel of death, all the way to God.
This parallels the Jewish worldview that by striving
to repair the world, tikkun olam, we can move toward the messianic
age rather than merely repeat the yearly round of fertility and
agricultural festivals embedded in our lunar calendar. We act on our
worldview when we accept the ethical commandment to welcome as
ushpizzin the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger into our
sukkah.
In essence, the coincidence of Sukkot with the
Moon Festival reminds us of the earthly universalist aspects of our
harvest festival and the shared emphasis on family. It reminds us that
other peoples too have fought oppressors just as we have. But at the same
time, this coincidence reminds us that we have chosen to be different by,
forgive me, reaching for the moon with our ethical ideals.
Michele Kriegman-Chin, a magazine writer and mother
raising three Sukkot-celebrators, is currently working on a book, Of
Mysterious Origins: Orphans, Adoptees and Test-tube Babies.