What is Sukkot？ A Beginner's Guide to the Jewish Holiday

What is the holiday of Sukkot? Otherwise known the holiday of the Tabernacles. If you live in a Jewish dense neighborhood you would realize that there's a time of the year that people build huts on the patios in front of their homes or in the yards. Why do we spend Seven days in a hut, which is otherwise known as a sukkah. So the holiday of Sukkot is one of the three main holidays in the Jewish calendar. It is the holiday of joy. It's a holiday that we leave our home and we sit in a hut, in a sukkah. A sukkah consists of four walls with some natural roof made out of leaves, branches, palms, pine, bamboo. We sit there and we eat and we spend the seven days there to remind us that when we sojourned in the desert, we also had Sukkot. We live with our history. We don't get stuck with our history, but we relive the history. Every year we spend these seven days, and when you walk into it, it's as if God is giving you a hug. Your whole body is walking into this amazing hut, and the whole season is a season of joy. It's called the season of joy. We're happy, we eat fine foods, we sing songs, we celebrate. Some people even sleep inside the sukkah. It is as if the glory, the clouds of glory are hovering over the sukkah. We do this for seven days. This is the culmination of the whole high holiday season. There are 21 days, the beginning from Rosh Hashanah, from the New Year's until the end of the holiday of Sukkot. And we take those moments. To sit and recall about our past journeys of life. And realizing that these huts are temporary dwellings. That once in a while we need to be reminded of what life used to be like. But eventually we'll go back into our homes. But during those times that we're sitting outside in a sukkah, it is so blissful, it is so joyous, and we are so grateful for everything that we have, that this is how we finish off the high holiday season, by recognizing that our history is what brought us here today, that those who blazed the trail until now, we have not forgotten them. That's why we sit in a sukkah, we eat and drink, And even if the weather is pretty bad, we still sit in the sukkah because we want to recognize that what God has done to us during our 40 years in the desert, we still today remember that. And we are proud of our heritage and we celebrate it. And we celebrate it with great joy. So this year, find your way to a sukkah. Just go inside, eat something, sit down and look around. Smell the air. You'll smell godliness and you'll feel God's hug hugging you. Happy Sukkot. God bless you.