The holiday of Sukkot is truly one of my favorite times of the year. I love building the sukkah (the outdoor hut that resembles the booths in which Israelites lived in the desert during their exile in biblical times), and making it my home for the seven days of the holiday. Together with my family and lots of guests, we eat meals in our sukkah, study Torah, sing songs, and dance. Because of the commandment to make the sukkah into a temporary house for seven days, my husband even sleeps there!
The walls of our sukkah are covered in decorations that my children made in school, and the roof is composed of special palm branches — schach, as they are called in Hebrew — that allow us to see through the roof up to the stars. It truly feels like an ancient home.
When I am sitting in my sukkah and I hear my neighbors singing their praises to God in the sukkah next door, I look up to the heavens and thank Him for giving us the Jewish homeland. It is only in Israel where all households — as well as businesses and even government buildings — build sukkot (the plural form of sukkah). Every sukkah has at least three walls built, and often people don't even add a fourth wall, just to show passers-by that they are welcome to come in.
Tradition holds that on each day of Sukkot a different biblical forefather comes to visit the sukkah as a guest of honor; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David, and Solomon are all present. As I was building my sukkah this year, I realized the message that this tradition is trying to impart to us — if we build our house upon a holy foundation with godly intentions, God's presence will dwell there.
The sukkah is truly the merging of heaven and earth. We create a holy structure to protect and surround us, just as the cloud of glory protected the Israelites while they wandered in the desert. Though it's a simple structure, I think of it as being a temple, just like the Temple that stood in Jerusalem and will one day stand again as a resting place for God's glory. So too, when we build the sukkah as the Torah commands and fill it with holiness, God's glory rests within it.
The holiday of Sukkot serves as a reminder of days past, as well of what is to come. Just as the Jews witnessed God's miraculous salvation when we were taken out of Egypt and brought to Israel, so too we believe we will witness a new reality when the Messiah comes and spreads peace and love throughout the world. The holiday of Sukkot is a taste of what this will feel like, and I cherish every moment of this seven-day holiday that God gave us as a blessed gift.With blessings from Jerusalem,
Yael
