Sukkot celebration

We headed to the rabbi's house tonight to celebrate Sukkot, the fall harvest festival (although it felt much more like summer than fall). Rabbi Cahana invites the whole congregation to dinner and a Sukkot service at his home, but the weather is usually so cold and/or rainy that we've never gone. But I checked the weather ahead of time, and saw that it was going to be nice outside, so we all went.

Rabbi Cahana has triplet girls and an older son, so they need a lot of room -- but, geez, was this a nice house. It's in the hills of Southwest Portland, and they have a pool, a hot tub, a deck, a large kitchen and presumably enough rooms for the kids (although I believe at least two of the girls have to double up). Ida Rae, the cantor -- and the rabbi's wife -- said they bought the house with the idea of holding congregational celebrations. The food was lovely; Ida Rae's mom made a noodle kugel that was out of this world, and even Rachel and Drew got enough so that we didn't have to think about dinner.

At 6 p.m. we all went outside to the sukkah that Rabbi had made. (He was trained in theater, and you could tell that from the construction; it was very well done. Theater majors all have to try their hand at prop-making, and many of them do construction on the side to make ends meet). We had a brief service, and then the kids took turns swinging the lulav (I didn't have a camera with me so I didn't get a picture of Rachel, alas). Then we all went back inside and continued eating.

I'm glad that Rachel got to see the whole thing, but Drew and I had mixed feelings about it. He summed it up perfectly by calling it an "event" -- not quite a dinner party, not quite a service. There was a little bit of reserve there. A few people from our chavurah showed up, and they were friendly, but none of us really got a chance to visit. Not sure I want to repeat this next year, but I'm open to considering it.