Sukkot

When the Israelites escaped from Egypt, their destination was the Promised Land, Canaan. However, it took them forty years to reach there and, except for Joshua and Caleb, it was the next generation that finally arrived. During that forty year journey, they lived in tents, temporary accommodation, called sukkot. To commemorate this, in this autumn festival, Jews build sukkot in their gardens. A sukkah is like a shed but, instead of a roof, it is covered with branches and leaves and inside is decorated with harvest festival fruits. In fact, it is also a celebration of the end of harvest, the final in-gathering of crops. In this country, Jewish families will eat meals in the sukkot, but in Israel they might also sleep in them.

A special ceremony carried out at this festival is the waving of the lulav. This is a special "wand" which is made up of branches of palm, myrtle and willow. The lulav is waved up and down in the four directions of the compass whilst turning an etrog, a citrus fruit. It symbolises the fact that God is everywhere.

On the eighth day of the festival is a special celebration called Simchat Torah ("Rejoicing of the Law"). It is a celebration of the fact that, in the weekly sabbath readings of the Torah in the synagogues, they have now reached the end of the Torah and have begun reading from the beginning again. The Torah scrolls are brought out and paraded, even danced, around the synagogue in a very joyful fashion. Everybody joins in the party atmosphere.

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