Palm Theft

by Marvin Wolf

In the beginning there was the schacht, a word that cannot be pronounced without spitting and so is rarely spoken.  It's Hebrew for the palm fronds used by Jews to roof the booths mandated for the festival of Sukkot, an autumn event characterized by prayer, natural foods, and the ritual shaking of an arcane citrus known as an esrog alongside a wand of willow, myrtle and olive called a lulav,      All this praying and shaking takes place inside the palm-thatched booth named for the festival. Unless it's the other way around.  To build these booths, Los Angeles synagogues have long relied on the generosity of the city Recreation & Parks Department, which, with LAPD assistance, distributes fresh palm fronds from City trees to qualifying organizations.     This year the distribution point for the West Side was Mar Vista Park. Instead of police officers,  rent-a-cops were on hand to make sure that everything went smoothly, and that everyone who came to claim their schacht was, well, kosher. Instead of the usual allotment of 100 fronds, however, West Side synagogues had to make do with about half that number. By substituting dried leaves and other vegetation, most congregations made do.     Although nothing was said at the time, the shortfall was the result of a brazen theft: Thieves wearing "religious clothing" and driving a rented white truck with out-of-state plates scarfed up most of the schacht. A suspicious rent-a-cop wrote down the truck's license plate number, but the theft has nevertheless baffled police.  Pacific Station detectives recently enlisted the help of Rabbi Dan Shevitz, spiritual leader of Congregation Mishkon Tephilo in Venice, and an LAPD chaplain. "I'm supposed to find out what the word on the streets is," he confided.      Most of Rabbi Dan's reliable informers are not on the street but on the Web, congregational rabbis much like himself. In search of the thieves, Rabbi Dan, a formidable scholar, has used the logic of the ancient Talmudists who reasoned hidden meanings from Bible texts. "Who could use schacht? Only a Jew," he observes. "And the thieves were dressed accordingly. But would anyone in Southern California need to steal palm fronds? Would a synagogue steal them? I think not. And the license plate was not from California."     So Rabbi Dan has put out feelers to colleagues around the country. Somewhere in a nearby state where palms grow only in pots, he believes, a schacht sukkot was assembled.  Some observant Jew must have noticed this miraculous appearance, and Dan hopes that he or she will get in touch. # # # Copyright © 1998 Marvin J. Wolf                                                                                     Palms Away                                                                                     2

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