Palm problems - Caulfield Council has limited its supply of palm fronds for religious purposes following concern that trees are suffering from excessive pruning - on Succot for Jews and Palm Sunday for Christians. The Council voted to provide up to 100 fronds for each church and synagogue. Residents who want more will be referred to other councils. (1)
Palm supply problems
Australian Jewish News September 14 1990 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article261340974
Palm supply was not normally an issue for local government but the City of Caulfield had a high population of Jewish people; in fact, in 1990 half of Melbourne's Jewish population lived in the City of Caulfield (and now since local government amalgamations over half live in the City of Glen Eira). Thus palm fronds were doubly required for both Christian and Jewish purposes. (2)
Palm Trees in Caulfield. Perhaps these are some of the trees which supplied fronds for
Palm Sunday and Sukkot.
View in Park Gardens, Caulfield. Photographer: Rose Stereograph Co.
State Library of Victoria image H32492/1039
What is Sukkot (or Succot as it is spelt in the article) and why were palms required? This explanation is from Chabad.org - https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4784/jewish/What-Is-Sukkot.htm -
Sukkot is a week long Jewish holiday that comes five days after Yom Kippur. Sukkot celebrates the gathering of the harvest and commemorates the miraculous protection G-d provided for the children of Israel when they left Egypt. We celebrate Sukkot by dwelling in a foliage-covered booth (known as a sukkah)...... For seven days and nights, we eat all our meals in the sukkah and otherwise regard it as our home. Located under the open sky, the sukkah is made up of at least three walls and a roof of unprocessed natural vegetation - typically bamboo, pine boughs or palm branches. (3)
Were the 100 palm fronds provided by the City of Caulfield per Church and Synagogue enough? I would hazard a guess that it was more than adequate for a Church, but not enough to distribute to all the families who attended each Synagogue. But I am no expert on Sukkot or the construction of a Sukkah.
Were the 100 palm fronds provided by the City of Caulfield per Church and Synagogue enough? I would hazard a guess that it was more than adequate for a Church, but not enough to distribute to all the families who attended each Synagogue. But I am no expert on Sukkot or the construction of a Sukkah.
_-_Sukkah_in_Abu_Kabir.jpg)
A young family standing outside the modest sukkah they built for the holiday, Israel, 1949;
with their limited means, the Aberyels built a sukkah to celebrate the holiday
in the traditional manner in Abu Kabir, near Tel Aviv.
I can't find a photo of an Australian Sukkah, but this is such a positive photograph;
I hope the family had a long and happy life.
Image and caption: By Government Press Office (Israel), CC BY-SA 3.0,
This undersupply of palm fronds seems to have been an on-going problem in Australia - the Australian Jewish News of October 6, 2006 (see here) reported on the issue -
Sydney still facing schach shortage - Sydney's Jewish community is this week feeling a shortage in the supply of schach (palm fronds) ahead of the festival of Succot. According to suppliers, they can only provide approximately half of the palm fronds required for the Sydney community, which has used up to 8000 fronds in past years.
“In Sydney, the situation is a little harder [than Melbourne], with the problem not so much the price as it is the scarcity of stock,” said Adass Israel member Benny Jacobs, who supplies the majority of schach to the city. “We have enough to supply the schools and shuls, but not much for the public.”
In Melbourne, Chabad Youth’s Moshe Kahn, who coordinates the main schach supply, said that they
were able to source extra supplies from South Australia at a “cheaper” price than local suppliers were demanding. “The [local South Australian] council came on board,” Kahn explained. “It all happened at the last minute.”
But in Sydney, Jacobs said that not only was the community having to source schach “from further and further away” in northern NSW and Queensland, but that trees closer to home were just not replenishing fast enough to satisfy the community’s needs. Two weeks ago, Kahn told the AJN that due to tighter council regulations governing the removal of palms, a disease affecting palm leaves and a rise in petrol prices, Melbourne suppliers had doubled their costs of palm leaves from $2.50 to $5 a piece. [article continues here.] (4)
Footnotes
(1) Australian Jewish News September 14 1990, see here.
(2) Australian Jewish News, July 4, 1989 see here; Jewish Community profile https://www.vic.gov.au/jewish-community-profile
(4) Australian Jewish News of October 6, 2006, see here.
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