“You shall live in booths seven days in order that future generations may know I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 23:42-43)
It’s not enough that for eight days of Pesach we eat matzah. No, six months later, to celebrate Sukkot, God commands us to dwell in flimsy, temporary huts that shake in the wind and sport leaky roofs.
Never mind that while we Jews move into sukkahs with their often nippy alfresco ambiance, most other people, cognizant of the shorter days and cooler temperatures, are putting up storm windows and firing up their furnaces.
Of course, that’s precisely the point — to recreate and re-experience the fragile and insubstantial structures that housed the Israelites for 40 years as they wandered in the wilderness. We reconnect to our peripatetic and uncertain beginnings and to our historical homelessness, once again putting our faith in God’s protective powers.
But the frailness eludes my children. “Sometimes I’d rather live in a sukkah than a house,” says my son Danny, 8. “A sukkah is holy, and God watches over holy places.”
Gabe, 12, pipes in, “Having a sukkah makes me feel like I’m really celebrating the holiday.”
Until last year, however, we had to rely on the kindness of friends to fulfill the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah.
But thanks primarily to Gabe, who lobbied long and hard for a sukkah of our own, we are the proud proprietors of a 10-feet-by-10-feet wood lattice-work tabernacle that fulfills our basic requirements: easy to assemble, no tools needed.
It also fulfills Judaism’s requirement of three walls at least 7 handbreadths long, 10 handbreadths wide and 10 handbreadths high. That translates to a minimum size of 17.5-inches-by-25-inches-by-25-inches, assuming the width of your four fingers is closer to 2.5 inches than 4 inches, but barely accommodating a family of small vertical weasels.
The other requirement is that the roof be covered with s’chach, a natural material in its natural state, such as bamboo or palm leaves, that cannot be eaten. The covering must provide more shade than sunlight, but allow one to see the stars at night. Of course, successfully viewing the stars through the clouds and smog of the Los Angeles Basin constitutes an even greater miracle than liberation from Egypt.
We are instructed not only to build, decorate and dwell in our sukkah, with “dwelling” roughly and most commonly translated as “eating,” but also to welcome in ushpizin, Aramaic for guests, who traditionally include Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David.
This year, in addition to the celestial celebrities from the Bible, we have a special guest from the land of the Bible, from a village between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He is Ya’ir Cohen, 15, an enthusiastic participant in an exchange program.
Ya’ir is enjoying an American Jewish experience that is academic, cultural, entertaining and religious — observing Reform and Conservative Judaism firsthand. He is living with us for the months of September, October and November, from the High Holy Days through Thanksgiving.
In the spring, the exchange will switch. Zack, my 15-year-old son, will live with Ya’ir and his family, attending high school, touring Israel and celebrating Pesach, Yom HaShoah and Yom Ha’Atzmaut.
The Bible tells us that Sukkot, even more than the other pilgrimage festivals of Pesach and Shavuot, is the season to rejoice.
We rejoice that we have completed the difficult and introspective work of the High Holy Days.
We rejoice that my husband, Larry, and his crew of boys succeeded in assembling the sukkah — perhaps not hastily, like the Israelites’ huts, but certainly challengingly and congenially.
And we rejoice that, although the sukkah is intentionally flimsy and temporary, our love of family, Judaism and our new Israeli “sibling” is solid and enduring.
Sukkot is indeed the season to rejoice.