Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Sukkot, a Jewish holiday that coincides with the autumn harvest, during which Jews erect sukkahs.
Sukkot
The Latest
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Culture Why Sukkot is called the ‘holiday of the harvest’ — even though there isn’t any harvest
In the Bible, the prayer book and Jewish tradition, the holiday of Sukkot — the “Feast of Booths” or “Feast of Tabernacles,” as it is generally referred to in rather archaic English — also has an accompanying epithet: ḥag ha-asif, the Feast or Holiday of “Gathering” or (as the King James and many other English…
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Fast Forward Spanish Towns Plan ‘Wedding’ for Sukkot
Two Spanish towns are preparing a Judaica festival featuring a mock wedding to celebrate their lost Jewish heritage. The event, co-organized by non-Jews from San Juan and Rio Jerte in the province Extremadura in northwestern Spain, will also include a Judaica market and songs on Sept. 28-29, according festival coordinator Antonio Gil. “This is a…
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Life 8 Jewish DIY Projects
Pickling cucumbers, cultivating yeast for Challah, sewing tallit … these hebraic homesteading projects are certainly not for everyone. But most Jews would agree that plenty of our traditions instill a cool-before-it-was-cool “Do It Yourself” aesthetic. This is a culture that often made do with very little and did it all behind closed doors, or within…
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Opinion We Got Plenty
Between two holidays that celebrate plenty — Sukkot and Thanksgiving — we are entitled, if not downright obliged, to inquire into the implications of plenitude. Accordingly, let us start with a Happy Birthday greeting. The greeting is in honor of Mazon, now in the second year of its second quarter century. Mazon began as a…
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Food Care to Share this Fall Season?
For the past two years, I have had the privilege of serving as an AmeriCorps Volunteer Coordinator at the Suffolk Y Jewish Community Center. In 2011, I partnered with the Temple Beth David Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program and Long Island Cares, a major food bank, to collect and distribute fresh produce to local food…
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Food Hot Chocolate for Cold Sukkot Nights
This year make room for chocolate in your Sukkot celebration. Sukkot’s theme of openness symbolized by the leafy ceiling and flimsy walls tempts creative approaches to menus, decorations, and customs. Deuteronomy 16:14’s challenge “v’samachta b’chagecha” (to rejoice in the festival) could easily be fulfilled by layering chocolate onto the holiday’s menus. Sukkot’s custom of welcoming…
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Food Modern Manna
Manna, the unknown substance upon which the Jews subsisted in the desert, has been a subject of mystery and wonder to the Jewish people for many thousands of years. Last night, a trendy New York beit-midrash study group called LABA brought the question to the table once again as part of their year-long discussion of…
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Food Killing Our Living Waters
During the High Holy Days when we are asked to take stock of our own lives and to squarely confront our own mortality, it is appropriate to also examine the well-being of the larger Creation upon which we depend, and of which we are a part. When we consider water, it has been quite a…
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