with Dawn Kepler
How Do We “Do” Sukkot?
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| Sukkot celebrates harvest |
If you have a question for our experts about Sukkot, or any issues about family life and relationships between people of different faith, please email us at bridges@sfjcf.org.
Anyone who has gone to an October Fest or Apple Harvest, or gathered with friends for fruit-picking before making jam, knows the exhilarating feeling of experiencing autumn’s abundance. Festivals to celebrate the harvest are a part of the vast majority of agricultural communities. In Judaism, the harvest festival is Sukkot.
This ancient biblical holiday, which lasts for eight days, is one of the three pilgrimage festivals. In antiquity, the Jews made pilgrimage to Jerusalem to make an offering at the Temple. Imagine thousands of Jewish families traveling to the same site to hold one heck of a big barbeque!
On Sukkot we are commanded to build booths – or sukkahs – in which to eat and sleep. They must not be permanent or sturdy. They must remind us that material things are fragile – that you shouldn’t trust in them; rather you should trust in the Eternal.
So Sukkot is part harvest foods, part building a clubhouse, part back yard camping, and all fun!
How do you make a sukkah? You can go to the local lumber store and buy the parts – any rabbi can get you a plan. (Email me and I’ll send you my husband’s plan.) Or there are mail order places to buy a ready-made sukkah. It comes in parts and you snap it together. Look on the internet (click here for one of many possible links) or call one of the Jewish stores like Afikomen in Berkeley.
Or get creative. Got sheets and clothesline? String it up in the back yard, using trees, fences, or the garage gutter to attach the strings, then throw the sheets over them. Live in a city where it’s too cold outside? Use the kitchen table or a card table and toss a sheet over that. You and the kids can crawl inside and eat in your imaginary hut. Or go outside and eat under a tree. The main idea is to experience the fragility of man-made structures and to rejoice in the protection that God gives us. If the God idea doesn’t work for you, then talk about how the love of those around you supports and sustains you.
The point of it is to teach your children and to remind yourself of the most important things in life - which are actually not things, but relationships - with people, nature, the holy. So use your sukkah – whether it’s an official hut or simply a tablecloth draped from the hydrangea to the porch – to eat, read, sing, invite friends, pray, sleep or just stare at the sky in a moment of autumnal appreciation.
Dawn Kepler is the director of Building Jewish Bridges: Outreach to Interfaith Couples. To contact her for her husband’s sukkah-building instructions – or other questions – email dawn@buildingjewishbridges.org or call 510. 663.8350.
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