On the one hand, it is a desert festival, alongside Pesach and Shavuot, which celebrates our desert wanderings and survivals while living in flimsy booths. From that perspective, perhaps it ought to have found its place immediately after Pesach in terms of the calendar and certainly before the description of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur in the biblical text.
However, the second identity of Sukkot, centered on the Four Species, represents our conquest and inhabitance of our homeland and signals the beginning of redemption. So which Sukkot do we celebrate? Both at the very same time! I think it depends on whether we are celebrating the festival in the Diaspora or in the Land of Israel!
The Jewish Week is always here for you. We need your support now. Your contribution will help us bring you vital news and frequent updates about the impact of COVID The week-long festival of Sukkot is really three celebrations in one: 1 Sukkot is a harvest festival , joyously celebrating the bountiful gifts the earth has given us—and hopefully will continue to give us—during the growing season.
This aspect of the festival derives from earlier pagan traditions and at times has included some rather bizarre rituals such as throwing lemons at, or pouring water on the king. The lemon-throwing is still practiced in a more subdued manner in the shaking of the etrog a lemon-like fruit and lulav a palm frond and willow and myrtle branches tied together.
People rejoice with them by waving them or shaking them about. Most people nowadays live in houses or apartments with strong walls and a decent roof. Spending time in a fragile hut in the garden, or under a roof of leaves rigged up on a balcony gives them the experience of living exposed to the world, without a nice comfy shell around them.
It reminds them that there is only one real source of security and protection, and that is God. Similarly, the holes in the roof reveal the sky, and metaphorically, God's heaven, the only source of security. Another meaning goes along with this: a Jew can be in God's presence anywhere. The idea here is that the person, having abandoned all the non-natural protections from the elements has only God to protect them - and since God does protect them this shows that God is there.
A sukkah must also have at least two walls and part of a third wall. The roof must be made of plant materials but they must have been cut from the plant, so you can't use a tree as the roof. Jews don't live in these huts too completely; it depends on the climate where they live. People in cold countries can satisfy the obligation by simply taking their meals in the huts, but in warmer countries, Jewish people will often sleep out in their huts.
You shall dwell in booths seven days, that your generation shall know I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. It's a simple festival. We take a palm branch, a citron, and some leaves of myrtle and willow, to remind ourselves of nature's powers of survival during the coming dark days of winter. Beginning five days after Yom Kippur , Sukkot is named after the booths or huts sukkot in Hebrew in which Jews are supposed to dwell during this week-long celebration.
According to rabbinic tradition, these flimsy sukkot represent the huts in which the Israelites dwelt during their 40 years of wandering in the desert after escaping from slavery in Egypt. The festival of Sukkot is one of the three great pilgrimage festivals chaggim or regalim of the Jewish year. Sukkot History The origins of Sukkot are found in an ancient autumnal harvest festival. The sukkah represent the huts that farmers would live in during the last hectic period of harvest before the coming of the winter rains.
As is the case with other festivals whose origins may not have been Jewish, the Bible reinterpreted the festival to imbue it with a specific Jewish meaning. In this manner, Sukkot came to commemorate the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert after the revelation at Mount Sinai, with the huts representing the temporary shelters that the Israelites lived in during those 40 years.
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