Sukkot (Hebrew: סוכות or סֻכּוֹת), also known as Feast of Booths, Feast of Tabernacles) is a biblical holiday celebrated on the 15th day of the month of Tishrei. Sukkot is one of the most joyful festivals on the Jewish calendar. “Sukkot,” a Hebrew word meaning "booths" or "huts," refers to the Jewish festival of giving thanks for the fall harvest. The holiday has also come to commemorate the 40 years of Jewish wandering in the desert after the giving of the atop Mt. Sinai.
Also called Z’man Simchateinu (Season of Our Rejoicing), Sukkot is the only festival associated with an explicit commandment to rejoice. Another name for Sukkot is Chag HaAsif (Festival of the Ingathering), representing the importance in Jewish life of giving thanks for the bounty of the earth. Sukkot is celebrated five days after Yom Kippur and is marked by several distinct traditions.
One, which takes the commandment to dwell in booths literally, is to erect a sukkah, a small, temporary booth or hut. A sukkah is commonly used during the seven-day festival for eating, entertaining and even for sleeping.The sukkah is intended as a reminiscence of the type of fragile dwellings in which the Israelites dwelt during their 40 years of travel in the desert after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. A sukkah is a walled structure covered with skhakh (plant material such as leafy tree overgrowth or palm leaves). Our sukkah have open walls and open doors, and this encourages us to welcome as many people as we can. We invite family, friends, neighbors, and community to rejoice, eat, and share what we have with each other.
On each day of Sukkot, members of the household recite a blessing over the lulav (closed frond of the date palm tree, bound with boughs and branches of the willow and myrtle trees) and etrog (yellow citron) (Four species).
