Dear Friends,

In September 1945, Rabbi Judah Nadich asked General Dwight D. Eisenhower for a favor. Nadich was a top U.S. army chaplain and, more officially, Eisenhower's advisor on Jewish Affairs. The general approved Nadich’s request to freight a hundred sets of lulavs and etrogs for the upcoming Sukkot holiday. Nadich made the arrangements. Boxes of palms and citrons traveled from the Holy Land to Frankfurt, to be distributed in displaced persons camps in Germany and Czechoslovakia.  

This wasn’t the first occasion for special wartime consideration for Sukkot. Four years earlier, American officials made an agreement with England’s Food Ministry to ship the special Sukkot items to London. Prior to this, British Jews imported etrogs from Corfu or Petah Tikvah. Due to Hitler’s malicious and multipronged invasions throughout Europe, those trade routes were closed.    

Both examples center on an underappreciated feature of Sukkot. Preparation for the festival requires some forethought and considerable startup costs. Its ritual items need to be acquired anew each year; its four species are perishable. The sacred Sukkot citron will expire. The myrtle and willow branches wilt. The sharp leaflets of the palm frond will not hold together year after year. Compare that, say, to the shofar blasted during Rosh Hashanah and in the final moments of Yom Kippur. That ram’s horn has a durable shelf life. 

Sukkot, then, is the holiday of pre-thinking. Of course, in our current unpredictable historical moment, prescience is a rarity and long-term planning can be tantamount to a fool’s errand. Yet, Sukkot is a helpful reminder that there might be more in our control, relatively speaking, than we realize.  

Take our College, for example. At Gratz, our faculty and staff have thoughtfully designed degree programs meant to anticipate the needs of professionals in Antisemitism Studies, Education, Jewish Studies, and Holocaust and Genocide Studies. With humility and purpose, the College’s leadership has convened partnerships with organizations, scholars, and philanthropic leaders to ensure that our learning community gains from collaborative and collective wisdom. 

So far, so great. Our new student enrollment is up 50 percent this year. Our overall enrollment, up by a quarter. Withal, Gratz College’s impact continues to grow—a reminder that there’s still a place for forethought in an unpredictable world. 

Zev Eleff