October 8, 2025
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Sukkot II
Our Father’s Kiddush Cup
October 8, 2025 – 16 Tishri 5786
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Do you remember, with crystal clarity, a class that you attended thirty years ago? I remember one such class like it happened yesterday—both what was said in the class, and how it made me feel.
It was a class attended by rabbinical and cantorial students, and Jewish educators and federation workers. The class was taught by Rabbi Elka Abrahamson, who was at the time a congregational rabbi in Minnesota. Elka has since gone on to head the Wexner Foundation. The class was August, 1995, in Cape Cod. The topic at first felt like a double disconnect. She was talking about Sukkot, two months before Sukkot. And she was talking about a word, a concept, a ritual, I had never heard of before: Ushpizin.
The word Ushpizin is Aramaic for guest. It refers to a mystical Sukkot tradition that comes from the Zohar in which people invite seven biblical figures to our Sukkah. The tradition has, I would say, a little bit of a patriarchal feel. The seven invited guests traditionally are: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David. Over time a female roster of Ushpizin was also developed inviting Sarah, Rebeca, Rachel, Leah, Miriam, Deborah and Esther into our Sukkah. The classic idea would be to connect with the spiritual legacy of each of these biblical figures.
Now, at Cape Cod, Rabbi Abrahamson did a modern move on this classic mystical tradition. The students were seated in a circle. She added an empty seat in the circle and invited us to welcome into our August sukkah somebody who is not here, either because they passed away, or for any other reason we fell out of touch with them. Each person would go over to the empty chair and introduce a loved one whom we no longer see. It was all very emotional. People carry stories. People carry scars. And this exercise of introducing someone who can no longer be at our Sukkah but whom we would like to invite to our Sukkah brought out a lot of vulnerability in ways that made everyone around the circle listen in rapt attention.
Then, I will never forget that a young educator named Jenny Bayer spoke. She added one yet more layer to the tradition. She shared that her grandmother had just passed away. She was very close to her grandmother. Her grandmother grew up in Hitler’s Europe. Most of her family perished in the Shoah. The family story was that somehow her grandmother had a pearl necklace; and somehow she was able to bribe the Nazi guard with this pearl necklace. The pearl necklace allowed her to survive the camps; to live; to come to America; to build a new life. She got married. She had children and grandchildren. And the family tradition was that every daughter or granddaughter was given a pearl necklace. Just then she unclasped the pearl necklace she was wearing, she showed it to the class. My grandmother gave me this pearl necklace when I celebrated my Bat Mitzvah. I have worn it ever since. I think about my grandmother all the time. My grandmother is with me all the time. I am constantly trying to channel my grandmother’s strength and grit, her ability to start again. This pearl necklace, she said with great emotion, is my grandmother. I will never forget that moment.
Things evoke stories. Stories evoke the character of people we love. So, at your Sukkot meals, I wanted to invite you to invite your guests to come with a thing or an object that would tell the story of somebody who is not there physically. Let me share with you an example from our dinner table. It is not as dramatic as the pearl necklace of Jenny Bayer from her grandmother, but it is real and meaningful to me.
Since our father passed away in Israel, we have been setting our Shabbat table with their plates and silverware. Every Friday night that we have company, we take out the plates and the silverware that used to adorn our parents’ Shabbat table in Jerusalem, and we think of them. And, we also always put out one other thing: Our father’s kiddush cup. It is a lovely silver Kiddush cup from the Rabbinical Assembly that simply says Nasi, President. He was the President of the Rabbinical Assembly when Shira and I first met in the 1980s. We don’t use it for Kiddush. We don’t drink with it. It is just there to remind us of our father.
This Kiddush cup prompts thinking about continuities and discontinuities from generation to generation. There are certainly continuities. Our father loved Shabbat and Shabbat meals and friends and community and Jewish living, and so do we. Our father was a rabbi, and so am I. It has always felt deeply meaningful that I do the work in my generation that he used to do in his.
But there are also discontinuities. My father in love belonged to a generation that cherished formality and title. He was Rabbi Goodman. Nobody called him Arnold. Maybe his wife, sometimes. But no congregant ever called him anything but Rabbi Goodman. I only go by Wes.
My father in love was a national figure. He exercised leadership for the Conservative Movement, especially helping the movement become egalitarian. We now take it as a given that women have a coequal place in leading our synagogues both as clergy and as lay leaders. But my father in law, and his generation, worked hard to make that happen. In his 50 years in the rabbinate, he went to the Rabbinical Assembly convention 50 times, every year, without fail. Wherever it was, he was there. When he retired, he continued to go to the Rabbinical Assembly conventions wherever they were held. He stopped going only in the last few years of his life when his health would not permit him to go anymore. I am local, a pastor and teacher at Temple Emanuel. I have never been to a Rabbinical Assembly convention, not for a single day. I am at 385 Ward Street seven days a week.
My father in love loved rabbis and kept a respectful distance with congregants. True friends were rabbis. By contrast, for Shira and me, our best friends are members of Temple Emanuel. The professional distance our father maintained is not our move.
When I look at my father in love’s kiddush cup, I am reminded of all that we share, and of our differences as well. True love does not mean we only love people who are like us. True love means we also love people who are not like us.
So, as we celebrate Sukkot this year, a few questions to deepen the meaning of the conversation.
Whom would you like to invite to your Sukkah who is no longer physically with you?
What object, what thing, tells their story.
What are the ways in which you and the person you invite into your Sukkah are similar?
What are the ways in which you are different?
How do you process these similarities and differences?
In his gorgeous speech to our community before Neilah, Larry Bacow observed that the Torah’s command to honor our parents does not end when they pass away. Let’s continue to honor them by bringing them into our conversations now, honoring, debating, loving their ongoing legacy in our lives. Chag sameakh.