How do we do Sukkot?
Well, we've actually changed things somewhat during the course of the holiday.
At the beginning, we were planning on spending as much time as possible in a Sukkah, or outside. Basically, we would limit our time inside greatly.
What is a Sukkah, you ask? Here's a picture of ours:
Yes, that is a tent. Jews would not accept a tent as a Sukkah. But oh well. The important part is passing on the meaning, not strict adherence to rules. Heck, even a Jewish Rabbi agreed that modern day tents are closer to the Sukkot (plural for Sukkah) that Moses and the Israelites used, than the modern day Sukkot Jews build!
So I said that we changed things. For the sake of space, I'll explain what we do now, and not as much before.
Our goal is to spend more time outside than we usually do. That said, if we really want to go inside, we will. Again, the point of these holidays is that meaning is transferred from parent to child, and that the important truths that go along with the holidays are brought to mind. What is not of great importance is meticulous (dare I say, Pharisaical?) rule-keeping. Anyway, a lot of our time is spend on our porch, but we still have our Sukkah up. However, we left the rain fly off.
It rained.
The Sukkah got soaked. It's mostly dried now, but that was still an interesting experience.
Another thing we did was we blessed the Sukkah. We used a traditional Jewish blessing. To go with that we got something called a lulav and an etrog. A lulav is an assortment of plants. We also got an etrog. Kind of. Those things are expensive. And they look like lemons. So . . . we got lemons.
Lulav and Etrog.
We shook them three times in six directions, and spoke the blessing. I spoke it in Hebrew, and my wife spoke it in English.
Here's the blessing we spoke:
ברך אתה יהוה עלהינו מלך העולם שׁהחינו וקימנו והגינו לזמן הזה (the spelling may be off)
Blessed are You, Lord God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.
It's kind of simple. We just spend some time outside, and enjoy life. Sometimes I'll play a song that is quite relevant (and has been stuck in my head for some time now):
We have tomorrow, and the next day, and then we'll have one more day: the day we take down the Sukkah. You'd think that was the end of the festival, but it's actually not. It is, in fact, the most important day of the festival. What will we do then? We'll go over a certain passage (John 7:37-39), which takes place during the eighth day of Sukkot.
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