Month: September 2026

Sukkot (סֻכּוֹת – Booths)
Leviticus 22:26–23:44; Numbers 29:12–16; Zechariah 14:1–21; Megillat Kohelet (Ecclesiastes)^[1]

The reading for the first day of Sukkot lists the festivals of the year and their requirements. The maftir describes the offerings of the first day of Sukkot. The haftarah from the prophet Zechariah foretells the day when the nations will go up to Jerusalem each year to celebrate the festival.

Leviticus 23:42
בַּסֻּכֹּת תֵּשְׁבוּ שִׁבְעַת יָמִים כָּל הָאֶזְרָח בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל יֵשְׁבוּ בַּסֻּכֹּת
You shall live in booths seven days;
all citizens in Israel shall live in booths.

16 Cubits is a gathering devoted to the sukkah, founded by Ethan Blake, a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College, and architect Misha Semënov-Leiva, in the tradition of Sukkah City.^[2] Its name refers to the measure of four cubits by four,^[3] which Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi considers the minimum size of a sukkah.

After a first edition in 2024 at Urban Adamah^[4] in California and a second in 2025 at Sun One Organic Farm,^[5] the third edition takes place at the same farm from September 23 to 27, 2026. Under the guidance of architects, participants build their sukkot from natural materials gathered on site.^[6]

On the evening of Friday, September 25, a service and a dinner held in the sukkot mark the arrival of Shabbat and Sukkot. Throughout the festival, participants live in the sukkot they have built, taking their meals and sleeping there in keeping with tradition.

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^[1] Megillat Kohelet is read during Sukkot according to some traditions. The book reminds us that human prosperity depends on God, an idea embodied by the sukkah, which symbolizes both the protection granted to the Children of Israel in the wilderness and the fragility of the human condition.

^[2] Sukkah City: a competition held in New York in 2010, in which twelve sukkot were exhibited in Union Square. The project was launched by Joshua Foer, an American writer and journalist, and Roger Bennett, an Anglo-American author, journalist, and media executive, as part of Reboot, an American Jewish organization that develops cultural and creative projects related to contemporary Jewish life. Joshua Foer now sits on the steering committee of 16 Cubits.

^[3] Four cubits by four: The Talmud (Sukkah 3a) records the opinion of Rabbi (Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi) that a sukkah must measure at least four cubits by four (2 m × 2 m); the Sages, however, do not adopt this requirement. Halakhah (Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 634:1) sets the minimum size at seven handbreadths by seven (60 cm × 60 cm). All agree, however, that there is no maximum area. The height of the sukkah, by contrast, must be at least ten handbreadths (about 1 m) and no more than twenty cubits (about 10 m) (Mishnah Sukkah 1:1; Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 633:1).

^[4] Urban Adamah: an educational farm and Jewish community center in Berkeley, California, that combines Jewish tradition, sustainable agriculture, and social engagement. It hosted the first edition of 16 Cubits in 2024, during which each team built its own sukkah and lived in it for a week.

^[5] Sun One Organic Farm: a farm located in Bethlehem, Connecticut.

^[6] Nehemiah 8:15: upon the return from exile, the people are instructed to go out into the hills and bring back branches of olive, pine, myrtle, and palm to make sukkot. The organizers draw on this verse to revive the use of natural materials.

Ha’azinu (האזינו — “Give Ear”) – Shabbat Shuvah (שובה — “Return”)
Devarim (Deuteronomy) 32:1-52 – Hosea 14:2-10; Joel 2:15-27; Micah 7:18-20

Moses, on the last day of his life, calls heaven and earth to witness, retraces the history of the people since its election, and announces that G-d will ultimately have compassion on His people and avenge the blood that was shed. The haftarah of Shabbat Shuvah brings together three prophetic texts centered on teshuvah (repentance).

Devarim 32:7
זְכֹר יְמוֹת עוֹלָם, בִּינוּ שְׁנוֹת דּוֹר וָדוֹר; שְׁאַל אָבִיךָ וְיַגֵּדְךָ, זְקֵנֶיךָ וְיֹאמְרוּ לָךְ
“Remember the days of old, consider the years of generation after generation; ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will say it to you.”

In the early 2010s, several hundred manuscript fragments dated to the 11th–13th centuries began appearing on the market. Afghan antiquities dealers offered them to Israeli institutions. The National Library of Israel acquired the bulk of these manuscripts, commonly known as the Afghan Genizah^[1], and continues to catalogue and publish them scientifically.

The texts are written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian. They were said to originate from caves in the Bamiyan region^[2] of Afghanistan. The existence of a flourishing Jewish community in this region had until then been attested only by rare, indirect mentions in rabbinic and Islamic sources.

Together, these documents^[3] reconstruct daily life — transactions, mourning, religious practice — with a level of detail no indirect source had ever allowed. Among them is a previously unknown commentary on the Book of Isaiah attributed to Rav Saadia Gaon^[4], written in Judeo-Arabic and absent from the entire known manuscript tradition. This fragment constitutes a unique testimony to Saadianic exegesis, revealing a portion of his work that had been thought lost.

For the medieval Jewish community of Khorasan^[5], no organized descendants remained, no oral tradition was passed down — only silence. It was the fragments themselves, recovered nearly a thousand years later, that came to stand in as elders and forefathers: it is the document that, in the end, “tells.”

Notes

^[1] Some scholars prefer the term “Afghan manuscripts” to “genizah,” for lack of proof that this was indeed a repository of worn-out texts in the ritual sense of the term, rather than some other kind of deposit.
^[2] The exact place of discovery has never been formally established: no archaeological excavation has confirmed the cave or caves of origin. This uncertainty is openly acknowledged by scholars rather than concealed.
^[3] The corpus portrays a Jewish merchant society embedded in the economy of the Silk Road. Among the finds are an account book kept over twenty-seven pages by the Abu Netzer family of merchants, private letters, legal documents, a fragment of tractate Avodah Zarah from the Mishnah — the oldest known rabbinic text east of Babylonia — biblical excerpts, and a commentary on Isaiah attributed to Rav Saadia Gaon. A partial siddur is also among the oldest pieces in the corpus.
^[4] Rav Saadia Gaon (882–942), born in Egypt and active in Babylonia, was the first great systematizer of medieval Judaism. As Gaon of the yeshiva of Sura, he composed, in Judeo-Arabic, the Sefer ha-Emunot ve-ha-De’ot, linguistic treatises, responsa, and extensive biblical commentaries, only part of which has survived, often in fragmentary form. The fragment found among the Afghan manuscripts attests to the spread of his writings as far as the Jewish communities of medieval Khorasan.
^[5] Medieval Khorasan: the region covering present-day northeastern Iran, Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan.

Nitzavim (נִצָּבִים — “You Are Standing”)
Deuteronomy 29:9 – 30:20 — Isaiah 61:10 – 63:9

Moshe gathers all of Israel^[1] to renew the covenant before the entry into the Land of Israel. He describes the exile, but promises the return. This haftara is the last of the seven haftarot of consolation: Zion will be rebuilt and adorned like a bride.

Deuteronomy 30:4
אִם־יִהְיֶה נִדַּחֲךָ בִּקְצֵה הַשָּׁמַיִם — מִשָּׁם יְקַבֶּצְךָ יְיָ אֱלֹהֶיךָ וּמִשָּׁם יִקָּחֶךָ.
“Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will take you.”

Behind a wooden door indistinguishable from the others stands Samarkand’s still-active synagogue, Kanesoi Gumbaz^[2]. Completed in 1891 in the old city’s Jewish quarter[3], it was funded by Rafael ben Moshe Nosi Kalantarov[^4] in memory of his wife, Tzipora.

The complex, designed by local master builder David ben Avraham, versed in Persian and Timurid forms^[5], comprises a large and a small gumbaz, connected by an iwan^[6], a central courtyard, and a Jewish hammam that housed the mikveh. Inside, the prayer hall’s dome resembles a blue sky. The library holds books in Judeo-Tajik^[7] and in Hebrew.

Today, the Bukharan community[8] has greatly diminished, largely in favor of Israel, where it numbers between^[9] 100,000 and 160,000 people.

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^[1] Rashi, on Deut. 30:4, understands this promise of gathering as extending to future generations as well, in continuity with the covenant.
^[2] Kanesoi Gumbaz is the Bukharan term for a synagogue (kanesoi, from the Hebrew כנסת, knesset, “assembly”) crowned with a dome (gumbaz). In the Bukharan context, the phrase has become a proper name.
^[3] Samarkand’s Jewish quarter, attested since the eighteenth century, is laid out around narrow lanes and low mudbrick houses. The synagogue there is deliberately unassuming, reflecting a cautious coexistence within a Muslim environment, where religious minorities lived under dhimmi status.
^[4] Rafael ben Moshe Nosi Kalantarov belonged to one of Samarkand’s prominent Bukharan Jewish families. The name Kalantarov derives from the Persian kalāntar (“notable, ward chief”), an administrative title given to communal leaders in Central Asian cities. According to accounts passed down by his grandchildren (Uzbek Travel, “Samarkand: in the wilds of old mahallas”), he died of cholera shortly before the building’s completion, without ever having prayed there.
^[5] The Timurid forms are recognizable in the floral and geometric motifs characteristic of Persian art, adapted here to a Jewish liturgical space.
^[6] The iwan is a vaulted hall open on one side, characteristic of Persian architecture. Here, it provides transition and ventilation between the courtyard and the enclosed spaces.
^[7] Judeo-Tajik, or Bukhori, is an Iranian language historically spoken by the Jews of Bukhara and Samarkand. It is traditionally written in Hebrew characters and includes a substantial Hebrew and Aramaic vocabulary.
^[8] Bukharan Jews form a Central Asian Jewish community established notably in Bukhara and Samarkand. Their identity developed at the crossroads of Jewish tradition and Central Asian Persian culture, within the context of trade networks.
^[9] Estimates of the Bukharan population in Israel vary according to source and criteria (family origin, place of birth, self-identification). The earliest waves of migration began in the 1970s, but the largest influx came after 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Outside Israel, the Bukharan community is mainly established in Queens (New York), Vienna, and Moscow.