The JCC of Greater Baltimore held their annual Harvest Fest on Tuesday, October 22 at the Owings Mills JCC, featuring plenty of fun and festive ways to celebrate Sukkot. In addition to festival classics like face painting and a bouncy house, the event also featured a sukkah where people could perform Sukkot blessings and traditions like shaking the lulav and the etrog.
The Harvest Fest is one of the JCC’s tentpole events in their J Life series of family engagement programming, and one that staff and members look forward to every year, said Melissa Seltzer, the JCC’s senior director of arts and culture.
“We call them ‘wow events’ internally, because we hope people will come to them and say wow — that they’ll have the wow factor in scope, in size, in things they’ve never seen before and in showing how fun Judaism can be,” Seltzer explained. “The idea is to create a festival that’s interesting for all ages, that is cool, fun and trendy and also has a lot of rich tradition.”
Guests were also treated to a performance from the Sagamore Band, which often partners with the JCC for their seasonal events, as well as homemade sangria and apple cider.
Avivit Geva, the JCC’s director of Jewish arts and culture, noted that making homemade sangria and enjoying it in the sukkah is a popular Sukkot tradition in Israel.
“It’s made with the seven species of Sukkot [wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olive oil and dates], and other berries and fruit,” Geva said. “It’s a mitzvah to have wine made from the fruits of the harvest in Israel.”
