Sukkot

Sukkot

A unique Jewish and boyish / goyish tradition?

Dwelling in a "hut, hut - HIKE!" for 7 or 8 days?  Oh, what's the use of this?

In Israel the first day is super important - when not dwelling in Israel the first two days are extremely important.  The holiday comes after Yom Kippur, where HaShem stamps the outcome for the entire world (both Jew and non-Jew alike).  For the religious jew (and perhaps even for religious or secular non jew), Hashem grants us an golden opportunity to 'sweeten the positive judgements and mitigate, modify or delay' the negative judgements.  A precious time indeed.  Many rabbis have varying opinions one the ideal attitude and levels of observance for the celebration.  We learnt, unfortunately and fortunately, from whomever we could.  As were were raised Christian and discovered our Jewish roots much later in life.  As the Torah states - "G-d gave Moshe - an impossible task".  Moshe negotiates and G-d says to Moshe, "do it anyways!"

We celebrated, as a family, the first Jewish holiday when I was 12 or 13 - of course, as a Christian family...

Since that time, at least in my proverbial cultural surroundings, have potentially obtained (per Rabbi Akiva Tatz of South Africa says 'a Rabbinic black belt' - a further potentially comedic sidenote given the nature (pun intended) of the place of this year's (5785/2024) sukkot celebration, in .IL.

Sukkot  -  5785 / 2025

A rabbinic celebration of...the feast of booths.  Something that 'we' and my family have meagerly celebrated since roughly 9 or 10 years old.  

Chametz cleaning

The final search for Chametz

The celebration

The 49 or 53 counting of the Omer