As Rabbi Eckstein wrote this week, the holiday of Sukkot, which begins tonight, is known as “the time of our happiness” -- and, in Israel, it’s the height of the holiday season (the equivalent of what December is here in the U.S.).
Schools, government offices, and many businesses are closed for the week while the whole country marks the holiday: Spending time in their own family sukkah (the hut whose plural form provides the holiday with its name), as well as visiting family and friends, going on day-trips, and taking advantage of the myriad of festivals and special events being mounted around the Holy Land.
The holiday’s origins are found in Leviticus 23:42-43, which instructs that “All native-born Israelites are to live in booths so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt.”
One of the three pilgrimage festivals (the others are Passover and Shavuot), Sukkot originally called Jews to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to God and take part in national recognition of His providence. In the two millennia since the destruction of the Temple, Jews have marked Sukkot by “dwelling” in the small huts or booths they build just for the week, along with a special prayers which include the iconic “lulav” (a palm frond combined with branches of myrtle and willow) and “etrog,” a citron, prescribed in Leviticus 23:40 (“On the first day you are to take choice fruit from the trees, and palm fronds, leafy branches and poplars, and rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days.”)
Even though the Temple is not standing, thousands and thousands of Jews from around the world travel to Israel every Sukkot to spend the holiday in the Holy Land.
Besides the resulting massive traffic jams, one of the most memorable things about this week is seeing sukkot—the little booths—crowded onto the balconies and roofs of apartment buildings and popping up in front of public buildings and restaurants, enabling people to eat their meals in a sukkah, one of the holiday’s primary laws.
Read journalist and commentator Judy Lash Balint’s description of a country preparing for Sukkot here (the photo up top is hers) and see photos of sukkot throughout Israel here.
During the week-long holiday, families relax and spend time in their sukkah and welcome friends and relatives there; the custom of stopping in to visit at a bunch of different friends’ sukkot in rapid succession is known among American Jews as “sukkah-hopping.”
During the days of the Temple, one of the most beautiful parts of the holiday was the Simchat Beit HaSho’eva, a massive celebration marking the annual water libation ritual. Without the Temple, the custom evolved into today’s simchat beit ha’sho’eva, festive parties thrown in large public sukkot.
Cities, schools, synagogues, and other large groups throw these joyous and noisy celebrations during the intermediate days of the festival. Watch students at Jerusalem’s Mirrer Yeshiva, one of the largest institutes of Jewish higher learning in the world, express their gratitude to God through song and dance here. (This one happens to be in the school’s study hall, not in a sukkah.)
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