God upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing him with food and clothing. You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt -(Deuteronomy10:19)
Sukkot |
In Israel Sukkot, The Feast of Booths, belongs to autumn, the close of the agricultural year, when we welcome yoreh the first rain and celebrate the ingathering of summer crops and fruit. Lulav and Etrog. Tradition dictates that at the end of Yom Kippur, one should begin building a sukkah. Sukkot has many symbols and rituals, with the rite of the Four Species (arba'ah minim) an integral and central part of the celebrations.
It is all spelt out for us in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, where we are enjoined to observe the festival for seven days at the end of the harvest season, when "you make your ingathering from your threshing floor and your wine press."
We are then instructed to "take the fruit of the goodly tree, date-palm fronds, a bough of a leafy tree and willows of the brook" and to rejoice. Israeli schoolchildren can usually reel off the names of the plants needed for the holiday - palm branches, myrtle, willow and the fruit of the citron (etrog). Immediately following the seven-day festival of Sukkot, comes the joyous two-day festival of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. (In Israel, the festival is "compacted" in a single day).
-music: Indian (Bombay) Succah
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