I love camping, which is one of the reasons Sukkot always appealed to me as a kid. It turns out, as I learned at Rabbi Abraham's Sukkot class tonight, that this holiday was one of the original “back-to-nature” events. It came about as a harvest festival (farmers might have lived in temporary shacks in their fields during the harvest so they didn’t have to waste time going back-and-forth). When Jews were exiled from Israel and began to lose their agrarian roots, this became a reminder of those times, as well as how the Jews lived in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt—another instance of temporary dwellings built out in nature.
I also found out that “living” in a sukkah means different things to different people. I was always taught that you should eat a meal in one and, if possible, sleep in one at least once during the week-long holiday. It turns out that Orthodox Jews eat every single meal during Sukkot in a sukkah (which explains why all of the Israeli restaurants build them over their outdoor seating).
It also turns out that we pray for rain on the last day of Sukkot, as this is the end of the dry season and the beginning of the rainy season (and planting time) in Israel. I think we’ve got that covered here in New Jersey, thank you very much Irene, but I’d be happy to pray for some to fall in Texas. (I can hear the politicians now: “Nah, don’t worry about it. I heard the Jews are gonna pray real hard next month, so they’ve got it covered.”)
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