Sukkot

The practice

Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, falls five days after Yom Kippur in the autumn. It remembers the forty years Israel lived in temporary shelters in the wilderness, and it celebrates the harvest coming safely in.

How it is kept

Families and synagogues build a sukkah, a small booth with walls of wood or cloth and a roof of branches thin enough to see the stars through. Meals are eaten in the booth all week, and many sleep there. Each day worshippers carry the four kinds, a citron, a palm branch, myrtle, and willow, and wave them in every direction.

What it means

Sukkot teaches the security of insecurity. A house feels permanent and a booth does not, and the festival insists that shelter was always a gift. Its other name is simply the Season of Our Joy, and joy is commanded, not merely permitted.