Have Lulav and Etrog, Will Travel

Hello dear readers,

As many of you may know, my husband and I have very different approaches to packing a suitcase. Aryeh travels a lot for business, and he prefers to pack everything into a carry-on bag so he doesn’t have to check his suitcase under the plane. Even when he’s not traveling for work (like for our upcoming kosher sukkot vacation – only a few weeks away!) he finds a way to economize. Sometimes it feels like he can pack a whole vacation’s worth of clothes in a breadbox! And my suitcase packing is… well, the opposite.

So why do I bring this up? Well, I was thinking about one of our sukkot vacations from a few years back, when as usual we were stressfully packing up the suitcases at the very last minute. And by that I mean, as usual I was the one stressfully packing; Aryeh, the experienced traveler that he is, was very zen about it all. However, as we were running out the door to catch our cab to the airport, Aryeh stops in the middle of the sidewalk, makes a u-turn and races back into the house. What did he forget? Why, it was the lulav and etrog, of course. And as he ran back out to the cabs, he said the line that serves as the title for this blog post: Have lulav and etrog, will travel.
In the moment, I was a little too stressed to really think about the line (we had three little kids at the time, and we juuuuuust barely made it to the airport in time). But later on the flight I mulled it over, and I’ve been thinking about recently as well.

It’s a weird concept, isn’t it? Have lulav and etrog, will travel. The meaning behind the line is something like, If I have my lulav and etrog, I’m ready to go anywhere and everywhere. Which is kinda true, maybe. I mean, first of all, we only said that after we had packed up all the other stuff, like clothes and shoes and toiletries and everything else that went into that suitcase. (Was it a little overweight? Yes, yes it was.) But second of all, even besides the clothing, lulav and etrog isn’t enough if you’re traveling for sukkot. You also need, you know, an actual sukkah! Thankfully, for that sukkot vacation of yesteryear we were traveling to Aryeh’s cousin’s house, and they had a beautiful sukkah, and for our upcoming sukkot trip the sukkah will be all taken care of. Hooray!

More soon,
Ariella

Are you looking for a kosher Sukkot vacation this year? Contact Leisure Time Tours to learn about booking one for your family today by calling 718-528-0700.