It’s Sukkos! This is not a particularly well-known holiday amongst the goyim, but it’s a Torah-mandated harvest festival lasting seven days. Like any good Jew holiday, it features the usual set of weird and arbitrary rules and rabbinical profit centers. Basically, you’re supposed to build a Levantine version of the Gilligan’s Island huts (the “sukkah”). In order for it to be religiously legit, there’s of course all sorts of rules to follow in the construction, and they’re arcane and complex enough to encourage the diligent Jew (the “sucker”) to buy a rabbinically certified prefab sukkah (this is a real thing). Now, once you have your kosher Sukkah installed, you’re supposed to stay in it all week, and follow the ritual of The Four Kinds.

The Four Kinds involves special Mosaic incantations over four shticks specified (loosely) in Leviticus, namely the lulav (basically, a palm frond), the esrog (a fruit that looks like a lemon grown near Chernobyl), the hadassah (a piece of wood), and the arav (a piece of a different kind of wood). Of course, once the rabbis came along, a new set of arcane and complex rules (are there any other kind in rabbinic Judaism?) around the Four Kinds developed, and in order for a diligent Jew to make sure he’s not going to piss off Yahweh, it is recommended to buy a complete rabbinically-certified Four Kinds Kit, which is a real thing.

Those who have read my past Jewsday posts have been exposed a bit to the Sadducee versus Pharisee fight over Jewgold, absolutely reminiscent of current rent-seeking in government (Super-short recap: Sadducees wanted Temple Priests to get the graft, Pharisees wanted rabbis to get the graft). The Pharisees won, complex rabbinical law has accreted onto relatively simple and straightforward Yahwist law (think case law versus Constitution), and in long-standing Middle East tradition, the winning rabbis have honed religious power and control for fun and profit to an atom-sharp edge. Sukkos is a perfect encapsulation.

So besides Shabbos and Sukkos, there’s birthdays today, including a guy who was neither Clark Gable nor Marlon Brando; a guy who left quite an Impression; a woodwind player who should have been much better known; the lowest possible common denominator in TV “journalism”; another ridiculously incompetent politician who got there via family; a reminder of the days when Sports Illustrated wasn’t about trannies; a guy whom I have many jokes about; and a bunch of dull actors and sportsballers that I’m too lazy to make up links to (I mean, does anybody actually give a shit about Michael Douglas?).

Whatever. Let’s get to Links before I turn this into a full-blown Jewsday Tuesday on the wrong day.

 

The King of Stupid Ideas gets support from President Depends.

 

This has to have created much (((laughter))).

 

“Wish we could jail and shoot ours, too.”

 

I want to see which Glib is missing.

 

Oh, dear god, NO!

 

In case you’re in the mood for frozen food for dinner.

 

Social science” isn’t science. Nothing that has to call itself “science” so people think it is science actually is science.

 

Old Guy Music today is a realization that it has rained practically non-stop since we got here six weeks ago. And it’s fucking great music.