It was dusk when the yellow school buses pulled into the Alpert Jewish Community Center. The buses brought dozens of students from UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton and others to meet the crowd already there. Overall, there were more than 100 people.
Students greeted each other in English and Hebrew, talking about sports, movies, majors and their lives in general. There’s an ease about their attitudes and the shared knowledge they have in common. They are united.
The buses then took students to different homes to pray and eat in celebration of the end of the Sukkot harvest festival.
At the first house, yarmulkes were given to those who had forgotten theirs. Food and drinks were distributed and toasts were raised. The sukkah at this home was built as an extension of the house.
“The whole idea is for [students] to have a good time and meet other students,” said Beach Hillel adviser Josh Kaplan. “It focuses on them being who they are.”
For some people new to Cal State Long Beach, it was their first sukkah hop of this magnitude.
“It’s my first event like this,” freshman Shea Hillinger said. “It’s fun and everyone’s friendly. My mom encouraged me to go; she went when she was in Hillel.”
Food and drinks already consumed, the students returned to the buses and were split up to different locations.
“I think it’s great we did something different by splitting up the buses,” said Beach Hillel President Ryan Pessah, a senior political science major. “This makes the events smaller, quieter and more intimate — a better chance to mingle.”
The next house was only a few minutes away. Students filed out of the bus again, laughing, talking and, for some, wobbling from the drinks imbibed from the previous house. The mood was nothing short of jovial.
The second house had the sukkah from CSULB.
Huddled in the sukkah, Rabbi Moshe Engel led the prayer and toasted the students.
Crushed into a corner with more than a dozen other students, CSULB public administration graduate student Sam Goldstein said some even sleep in the sukkah.
More singing, dancing and eating followed.
So did a little competition. In the sukkah, there was a large bowl of red and yellow peppers that students attempted to eat in one bite without flinching or letting their eyes water.
Fed and watery-eyed, students returned to the bus.
This would be the last house before they rejoined the group. Here, students were treated to warm split-pea soup and drinks.
Beach Hillel wasn’t hosting just Southern California students, but also international ones, such as Anthony Sultan, an exchange student from Montreal Canada majoring in neuroscience.
“This is great because I came here alone,” Sultan said about the sukkah hop and its sense of unity. “No matter where you are in the world, there are Jews.”
What was different about this stop was the guest speaker who was almost half the age of everyone there.
10-year-old Avi Rapoport, a student at Hebrew Academy, talked to more than 30 college students about what sukkot means.
The last stop was a three-minute walk from the house to another sukkah set up outside of a Jewish community center. Students joked and reflected on the events of the night so far.
“This is one of the best ways of staying connected to your Jewish roots,” said Josh Berookhim, a biology major from UCI. “This is [also] a great way to meet other people.”
Other students agreed with Berookhim.
“I think this is a great way to get college students motivated in something both religious and educational,” said Benny Khorsandi, an undeclared freshman from UCI.
The last round of food and drinks were distributed as students reunited to talk of their time apart and to celebrate being together again.
“I ran into an old friend who told me about this today,” said junior Charlotte Rosenblum, a human development major. “I’ve never been and thought it would be fun.”
Singing and toasts preceded the night’s main event, a $100 raffle.
Students began to shuffle out of the sukkah and back onto the buses, reflecting on the events of the night.
“We were having fun all night,” said junior Michelle Feldman, an international business major. “This was great.”
The buses returned to the Alpert center to drop students off before shuttling back to UCI and Fullerton.
“It’s always a good time,” said Jordan Greenberg, who graduated from CSULB in 2004 with a degree in communications. “It’s good seeing the Jewish community getting together.”