Learn about the etrog fruit and hear Sukkoth songs, see booths and mosaics showing etrog - what is it? In the UK, USA and Israel, see harvesters' huts

The fruit is not a lemon but an etrog, the silver box is for the etrog and the lulav is a bunch of four plants including palm.

 Picture from Wikipedia, credit to author Gilabrand.

Sukkoth is a jolly festival, full of surprises, including the etrog fruit which looks like a lemon but isn't a lemon. You can use it to make tea, or jelly. A Californian planted her etrog seeds and grew a tree which attracts bees in the USA. You can use the etrog fruit for cookies, cake, salt, pickles and chutney.

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/433055/jewish/Post-Sukkot-Uses-for-the-Etrog.htm

Problem
What is sukkoth all about?

Answer
Sukkot is the Hebrew plural for sukkah, a booth or tabernacle (a one-room protective building, which can be as small as a cubicle).

Basically it is a Jewish autumn harvest festival or celebration. You build a two or three or nearly four-sided temporary structure, three-sided against the wall of the house. It is built of plants such as palms, with gaps so you can see the sky, with a roof which enables you to hang citrus or other fruit and cereal plants.

Every Jewish (orthodox) home builds one and so do synagogues for communal services and for the benefit of families who cannot (for example, living in a block of flats), away from home in a hotel.

On one occasion I went to a synagogue built in the ground of a London Liberal synagogue. They had invited members of the next door church and members of the UK's Council of Christians and Jews. We had an explanation of the history of the ceremony from the rabbi, food, fruit, wine or fruit drinks, prayers and songs and a get together.

On another occasion I was invited to a neighbour's garden to see their sukkah and learn about it from a lay rabbi. He showed me how you faced in a particular direction to shake a long piece of plant.

The sukkoth, or tabernacle, seemed a relic from the past and I didn't understand it.

See modern ones in Jerusalem during Sukkoth. Photo from Wikipedia.

India
Then I went to India and our long distance taxi took us past fields with little huts in the middle. I asked the driver-guide, "What are those small structures in the middle of the field?"

He said, "They were temporary huts for the temporary workers hired to watch the crops. Somewhere for the guard to rest in the shade and sleep at night. The crops are ready to be harvested and somebody has to stay there 24 hours to protect the crops from potential theft, vandals and marauding animals."

"I thought it was a toilet."

"No. They'd probably go in the fields anyway. Sometimes just a roof, against sun and rain, poles made of branches, and straw."

"Walls against the wind and dust? Woven? Suddenly I gasped, "It's a sukkos!"

Now I could see exactly what the sukkos might have been originally, and how it had evolved into a mandatory religious custom with added prayers and songs. Easy to remember which ceremony is Sukkoth.

When is Sukkoth? Wednesday 4-Wednesday 11 October 2017. Next year Sunday 23-Sunday 30 September.

For dates in the Hebrew calendar look in a diary from a Jewish organization or charity or a website.

However, all year you can see a Sukkah in Paris, France. It's at the
Museum of Jewish Art and History.

Sukkah in Museum of Jewish Art and History, Paris, France. Photo from Wikipedia.

SUKKOTH BOOKS & SOUVENIRS
You can buy books about Sukkot, including some beautifully illustrated and simplified version for children. Books can be bought from Jewish museums, Israeli shops, synagogue bookshops and display cabinets, and borrowed from public libraries, and synagogue libraries, or bought new and second-hand from online book sellers such as Amazon and ebay.


The BBC has a solid analysis and quote from the Bible book of Leviticus 22 :"You shall dwell in Sukkot seven days."

The BBC piece ends with a heartfelt piece by the Chief Rabbi of England who talk about what it feels like to feel close to nature in the age of insecurity, and wartime, recalling wearing masks for protection being attacked my missiles in Israel, looking up to God for protection.

Helpful Websites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukkot

ww.123greetings.com/events/sukkot/ (ecards for holidays)

https://www.hebcal.com/holidays/2018-2019 (Hebrew calendar)

HAPPY SUKKOTH SONGS
http://metro.co.uk/2017/10/04/today-is-sukkot-2017-the-jewish-harvest-festival-6949981/

The excellent metro article has a link to a video of a song which you can also find on YouTube:
Shakin' The Lulav (a variation on Twist and Shout)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gODQ0pgR64Y&feature=youtu.be

Another modern song with youngsters dancing is
Livin; in a Booth by Fountainheads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXx5Wp3GcSE

If you were to travel to Israel you might see the Sukkoth in Tel Aviv which has many Bauhaus style blocks of flats.

In Jerusalem you might see ceremonies by the Wailing Wall or Western Wall.

TEL AVIV'S ERETZ ISRAEL MUSEUM - Etrog on Mosaic
Also in Tel Aviv you could see the ancient mosaic from Tiberius synagogue dating from the 7th century ce (common era, to Christians known as AD) showing the etrog (best seen to the right and left of the picture, in the Eretz Israel Museum, Tel, Aviv, Israel. (Eretz means land in Hebrew.)

Also look in this museum and others in Israel and elsewhere for coins from the Bar Kochba era showing the etrog fruit and the bunch of palm and three other plants.

SUKKOT GIFTS
If you are travelling to friends and need a gift websites offer an assortment ranging from an etrog shape candle for just over £14 to etrog silver boxes at all prices.
https://www.judaicawebstore.co.uk/sukkot-C31.aspx

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.



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Moon cakes and mid-autumn harvest festivals: Jewish Sukkoth and Indian Huts

Over breakfast, the morning after my trip to a Toastmasters meeting on the theme of the Moon Festival, we could see the orange lanterns around the swimming pool in Singapore had gone.

However, memories of the mooncake discussions about the moon festival of previous days lingered in our minds. We sat eating Scottish porridge oats, not a Chinese, Malay or Singaporean or Asian porridge savoury, not the Scottish way with salt, but the English way sweetened with sugar. Our own family version features the addition of Canadian maple syrup. The British are famous for their fondness for sweet foods, with a high per capita consumption of sugar and confectionary.

Harvest Festival at School in England
I remember from schooldays in London, England, how we would see the school hall decorated with greenery, and a small mountain of tainted food and fresh food to the right of the hall platform. At one time the food would have been distributed back to the children, so that the poorest families received food, in effect, from the richer families. Nowadays, more often the food is sent to homes for the elderly and poor and to charities for the homeless. To me this was an English tradition, and a Christian tradition.

Sukkos for Sukkot Festival
Later I visited a synagogue in London and saw the sukkos, the autumn harvest festival where a three sided hut is constructed from tree branches and plants. it might be tied with raffia. It is often open fronted with three sides with the fourth sides against or formed by the outside wall of a home. In the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties, in London, the religious Jews would build a sukkos in their back garden. Non-religious friends might be invited to share the ceremony.

In the late nineteen nineties or the 21st century I was invited to a multi-faith ceremony in a Sukkos built at the back of a Liberal synagogue. The purpose was to share the tradition with increasingly secular families who no longer bothered to build a sucks at home. Also to show the Sukkos to the members of the Methodist church alongside (the church and synagogue often entertaining each others members).

A Sukkos for a private home would be small. In the large communal size Sukkos the colourful fruits hung from the roof which was partly open to the sky. The ceremony included an explanation of the origin of the festival, songs and prayers, and ended with plates of fruits passed around and general conviviality and mingling.

At the end of the festival, the rule is, you must dismantle the construction entirely. A new one must be built each year. (This reminds me of the Seder night, passover, when the spring harvest requires all the old food to be discarded, because it might be infected with the mould causing St Vitus' dance, before the new harvest is brought back to be stored. In the Seder festival you have a new dining set.)

Indian
I was astonished when I went to India to see that huts for the harvest workers were in the middle of the field (guarding the harvest against robbers at night), reminiscent of biblical times in the Far East. Suddenly the Jewish festival, with its construction of a hut from fronds, tacked onto a brick building in a back yard, which had all been a puzzle to me, made perfect sense. it echoed the old days when your food for the next year was brought back from a field where the family or a servant or employee was camped out overnight in a makeshift DIY temporary hut.

As we sat over breakfast, mulling over these harvest festival memories and thoughts, I reflected that these traditions all reflected harvest and autumn festivals.

Singapore
"But Singapore doesn't have autumn, nor four seasons, nor harvests," pointed out a member of my family. "The tradition comes from China."

Maybe the harvest festivals of the Christian, Jewish, Chinese and Indian cultures are not connected. But I used to have trouble remembering whether the Jewish Sukkos and the Chinese moon festival are in the spring or autumn. Now with this mental connection, it's very clear to me and easy to remember.


Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Moon cakes and mid-autumn harvest festivals: Jewish Sukkoth and Indian Huts

Over breakfast, the morning after my trip to a Toastmasters meeting on the theme of the Moon Festival, we could see the orange lanterns around the swimming pool in Singapore had gone.

However, memories of the mooncake discussions about the moon festival of previous days lingered in our minds. We sat eating Scottish porridge oats, not a Chinese, Malay or Singaporean or Asian porridge savoury, not the Scottish way with salt, but the English way sweetened with sugar. Our own family version features the addition of Canadian maple syrup. The British are famous for their fondness for sweet foods, with a high per capita consumption of sugar and confectionary.

Harvest Festival at School in England
I remember from schooldays in London, England, how we would see the school hall decorated with greenery, and a small mountain of tainted food and fresh food to the right of the hall platform. At one time the food would have been distributed back to the children, so that the poorest families received food, in effect, from the richer families. Nowadays, more often the food is sent to homes for the elderly and poor and to charities for the homeless. To me this was an English tradition, and a Christian tradition.

Sukkos for Sukkot Festival
Later I visited a synagogue in London and saw the sukkos, the autumn harvest festival where a three sided hut is constructed from tree branches and plants. it might be tied with raffia. It is often open fronted with three sides with the fourth sides against or formed by the outside wall of a home. In the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties, in London, the religious Jews would build a sukkos in their back garden. Non-religious friends might be invited to share the ceremony.

In the late nineteen nineties or the 21st century I was invited to a multi-faith ceremony in a Sukkos built at the back of a Liberal synagogue. The purpose was to share the tradition with increasingly secular families who no longer bothered to build a sucks at home. Also to show the Sukkos to the members of the Methodist church alongside (the church and synagogue often entertaining each others members).

A Sukkos for a private home would be small. In the large communal size Sukkos the colourful fruits hung from the roof which was partly open to the sky. The ceremony included an explanation of the origin of the festival, songs and prayers, and ended with plates of fruits passed around and general conviviality and mingling.

At the end of the festival, the rule is, you must dismantle the construction entirely. A new one must be built each year. (This reminds me of the Seder night, passover, when the spring harvest requires all the old food to be discarded, because it might be infected with the mould causing St Vitus' dance, before the new harvest is brought back to be stored. In the Seder festival you have a new dining set.)

Indian
I was astonished when I went to India to see that huts for the harvest workers were in the middle of the field (guarding the harvest against robbers at night), reminiscent of biblical times in the Far East. Suddenly the Jewish festival, with its construction of a hut from fronds, tacked onto a brick building in a back yard, which had all been a puzzle to me, made perfect sense. it echoed the old days when your food for the next year was brought back from a field where the family or a servant or employee was camped out overnight in a makeshift DIY temporary hut.

As we sat over breakfast, mulling over these harvest festival memories and thoughts, I reflected that these traditions all reflected harvest and autumn festivals.

Singapore
"But Singapore doesn't have autumn, nor four seasons, nor harvests," pointed out a member of my family. "The tradition comes from China."

Maybe the harvest festivals of the Christian, Jewish, Chinese and Indian cultures are not connected. But I used to have trouble remembering whether the Jewish Sukkos and the Chinese moon festival are in the spring or autumn. Now with this mental connection, it's very clear to me and easy to remember.


Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.