Some women invited their mothers...

...others chose Golda Meir, Barbra Streisand and Michelle Obama. Still others picked the mom of freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Me? I involked Moo to come join us in the sukkah last evening.

What's a sukkah, you ask? It's a temporary outdoor structure, a hut, built for the week-long festival of Sukkot with 3 sides and barely covered so you can see the sky...it becomes the Gathering Place - the hearth so to speak - for friends and family. It's a place of connection and true community, even if you're alone. And though the sukkah symbolizes frailty and the temporary nature of life, what happens in a sukkah can be very powerful indeed.

Especially when you have 40 or so women gathering to celebrate the new month, or Rosh Chodesh.

(Rosh means head, so since it's at the top it also means start, and chodesh is month...Jewish women's groups often adopt Rosh Chodesh as a time to gather because of a woman's connection with the moon - ours is a lunar calendar after all - and we both have 28-day cycles. Oh! And because the women remained level-headed and faithful wandering in the desert for 40 years while the men ran off half-cocked, yelling "FIRE!" and smelting a silly little cow o'gold. So we were rewarded with a holiday...but I digress...)

So as if there weren't enough gals spilling out of the sukkah onto the patio and lining the adjacent rock wall, our fearless leader called for reinforcements! It's a tradition that for each night of Sukkot, you ceremonially 'welcome' a biblical figure into the sukkah with you, and that became our celebration... getting to know each other a little better by whose spirit she invoked.

So we introduced ourselves and said what woman - biblical, historical or current, Jewish or not - we would invite...as I said, I 'brought' Moo. I really don't know why. She wasn't particularly observant; I don't even know if she belonged to the women's club at her own synagogue. But she was the first woman to pop in my head and there she stayed...giggling with me, talking to my friends and inspecting the baked goods.

I think she fit in well with the crowd...each woman a testament to strength over vulnerability...Maybe that's why she came to me: The sukkah may be flimsy, but what's inside is enduring.

To make sure the guys endured without me, I made meatloaf the night before so they'd have leftovers.

Details?
Here goes:

-Preheat oven to 375 and line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
-In a bowl, combine 1 lb ground beef, 1lb ground turkey, 2 eggs, 2 T worcestershire sauce, a quarter to a third cup red wine, a quarter cup bread crumbs - I used matzah meal 'cuz it was the first thing I saw in the pantry! - 1 finely chopped medium shallot, 4 minced garlic cloves, 1 and a half t salt, lotsa ground black pepper and 1 and a half t dried oregano.
-Combine with your hands until well mixed, but don't mix it to death.
-Place on sheet pan and shape into a loaf.
-Pour on 1 4-oz tin tomato sauce - or as much as it'll take...
-And pop into oven for about an hour and a half...internal temp should be 160 when done.
-When done, let it rest another 10 minutes out of the oven so you're not serving crumbs.

And though their eyes weren't glowing quite as brightly when I came home as they were the first night they had this, they were happy. And so was I.