The holidays just keep coming: Sukkot (סוכות)

Walking to dinner the first
night. Sukkot is in the middle
of the lunar month. Rosh
Hashanah is on the first day
of the lunar month.
Proof: Full Moon!

So, the holiday season in Judaism doesn't end with Yom Kippur. There are two more major holidays right after it. Sukkot is a festival holiday celebrated by setting up your sukkah and eating in it. It honors the years of wandering in the desert and the booths that the Jews (supposedly) assembled to live in. We have never set up a sukkah of our own, but tend to participate in our temple's celebrations. Sukkot is a significant holiday--not as significant as YK, but more significant than Chanukah.

Sukkot is a long holiday (like Chanukah)--eight days outside of Israel and seven days within Israel. But all seven/eight days are not equally holy. Israelis categorize it (to me) as a one-day holiday (as opposed to the two-day holidays). This has practical ramifications: last shabbat, things shut down late afternoon on Friday, and reopened last Saturday night or early Sunday morning. Sukkot started Sunday night, which means that things shut down again on late afternoon of Sunday and will start reopening late tonight. There was a very brief service last night (35 minutes?) and services this morning, which we did not attend.

Schools are closed for the whole week (plus a few days next week). Grandma & Grandpa from Colorado have come for the week and are getting quite the immersion experience into Judaism. We'll be doing some touring around Israel for three days and it's going to be very busy because all the schools are closed!

In Israel, enough people set up sukkahs that you cannot miss that something special is happening. A lot of the street cafes and restaurants will set up outdoor seating in their sukkahs. Sukkahs pop up on apartment balconies and in driveways (presumably by agreement with the tenants who can now not get to their parking spots).  There was a large open-air market where every stall sold pretty much the same thing: the etrog (a citrus like a lemon) and the makings for a lulav (palm, willow, and myrtle). A few stalls sold twinkle lights, decorations, extension cords, and other necessities.

Sharing a meal with friends and family in the sukkah is a big part of the holiday, perhaps the most important. In the rabbi's sermon, he mentioned that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (and the days in between) are so much about introspection and reflection. Sukkot is a good time to turn outwards again.

G&A with the decorations
for the sukkah.

Decorating the sukkah is a big deal for kids. On Sunday, Helen went to Kfar Saba with her art teacher to help run a station at their congregation's community sukkah-making-decorations party. That same afternoon, Gabi and Alice were leant out to new friends who sat in front of us at YK services to decorate their sukkah (all their children are grown and out of the house). G&A had a blast getting to do it all by themselves. There was a box of shiny 3-D decorations (made in China, of course) to assemble and hang up, and they made a paper chain to go around the entire booth. They also hung the twinkle lights and made beautiful tissue paper flowers. Parallels with decorating a Christmas tree were obvious...

The open air market selling sukkot supplies.

anyone want to buy some decorations?

There are two "holiday" meals during that first 24 hours of sukkot: Sunday night after sundown and Monday lunch. Sunday night, the seven of us joined a family of eight in their sukkah. We had inches to squeeze in and out of our chairs. Our wonderful hosts were a modern Orthodox family with six kids, ages 1 to 16. Josh and I met the mom at a house concert a little more than a week ago. A ten-minute conversation after the concert resulted in an invite for the seven of us to come for sukkot. Extremely generous. There were a lot of prayers in Hebrew, a ritual washing of hands (with its own blessing), a massive multi-course meal, and grace after meal. We got home very late, after eating for a few hours. Today, we went to lunch at the home of the family who borrowed G&A to decorate their sukkah. We spent 3.5 hours celebrating with them and their wonderful food.A little less Hebrew but essentially the same structure.

So. Much. Food.