As I begin to write this week, my sukkah is skittering around my porch amid heavy wind gusts. The palm, willow, and myrtle branches along with citrons that comprise the lulav and etrog sets to be waved in prayer over the holiday have been delivered to my synagogue for pickup.  I am already bracing for the change in liturgy that will take place a week from Thursday—on Shemini Atzeret—to add praise for God who “causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall,” a seasonal change in the prayers that requires upending the last six months of habitual recitation.

It almost seems as if the holiday was designed to attenuate us to the meteorological realities of this time of year on the east coast of North America—to hurricane season.  We build a shelter that provides no real shelter at all.  The waving lulav and etrog evoke the wind-bowed palm trees that provide every weather reporter’s backdrop.  The winds blow.  The rains fall.  Of course, this year, we need no such reminder when Helene and Milton have brought such devastation to the Southeast, though our area was spared.

On September 8, 1900, Galveston, Texas was struck by “the Great Storm.”  The low-lying barrier island was inundated under twelve feet of water and somewhere around a quarter of its population of 40,000 perished.  The effects of the storm have persisted to this day; the former premier port city on the Texas coast lost its preeminence to Houston, in whose shadow it remains.

Galveston’s Jewish community suffered along with the rest of the city, and those who remained played their part in the city’s recovery.  A local sugar magnate, Isaac H. Kempner, contributed generously to the rebuilding of both the Jewish and general communities, and the next year became finance commissioner (and later mayor).

The rabbi of Galveston’s Reform congregation, B’nai Israel, was a 37-year old activist.  Rabbi Henry Cohen had worked tirelessly to rebuild Galveston and its Jewish community after the storm.  A few years later, he saw opportunity in an effort driven by New York philanthropist Jacob Schiff.  With the tenements of New York and other Northeastern cities overflowing with new arrivals from Eastern Europe, Schiff believed that new ports of entry and pathways to America’s hinterlands needed to be opened.  Working with the Jewish Territorial Organization, headed by the British writer Israel Zangwill, Schiff sought to promote alternatives to prospective immigrants through an informational campaign in Eastern Europe, Schiff needed a partner in the South.  From Rabbi Cohen’s perspective, a flow of new Jewish immigrants could only serve to bolster Galveston’s Jewish population, even if the ultimate goal was to move most further into the American interior.

While Schiff considered several southern ports, as the terminus of the North German Lloyd Line, immigrants could arrive directly to Galveston from Bremen.  Rabbi Cohen’s readiness to organize immigrant services to support the new arrivals in resettling locally or moving elsewhere in the southwest enhanced Galveston’s allure.

Alas, the “Galveston Movement,” as it came to be called, never realized its ambitions during its lifetime—1907 to 1914.  Estimates are that ten thousand arrived, but hardly the hundreds of thousands that would have dramatically shifted the settlement patterns of Jewish immigration, although it likely did provide a boost to Texas’ Jewish population.  For Galveston, the effort had only a modest impact.

The plan’s failure is attributed largely to antisemitism on the part of immigration officials in Galveston.  The absence of competing steamship lines and European ports of embarkation was not helpful, and there are those who criticized the plan for its lack of attention and concern for the religious needs of a mostly-Orthodox immigrant population.  The resistance of merchants in already-established communities also created barriers for new settlers.  But for those who did disembark there, Rabbi Cohen and the Galveston community, so recently recovering from its own tragedies, gave shelter to the new arrivals, so many seeking escape from the pogroms and poverty of Eastern Europe, as they sought a new future in a land that offered promise—perhaps joy.

If Sukkot celebrates the summer harvest’s end and the beginning of the rainy season in Israel (and coincides with hurricane season here), it is also very much about the journeys of the Israelites in the desert, which serve as a paradigm for the many wanderings of the Jewish people ever since.  It reminds us that we have lived in many places, traveled much, and suffered many vicissitudes along the way.

But when we gather in our sukkot and recite the Kiddush, we do not refer to Sukkot as the season of harvest, or of rain, or of wind, or of wanderings.  Rather, echoing the festival Torah reading’s injunction to “rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days,” we refer to Sukkot as “the season of our joy.”  For indeed, despite the winds and rains and travels to distant places, we have always found joy.  And this year, we certainly must endeavor to do just that.

Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom.