Sukkot

This week is Sukkot. I'm not totally confident about my explanation of the holiday (Most of the Jewish holidays are new to me) but I'll do the best I can.
Sukkot is both a harvest festival and a holiday that commemorates the forty-year period during which the children of Israel were wandering in the desert, living in temporary shelters. The temporary shelters are called Sukkah and during Sukkot often families will build one outside their house and eat their meals in it, sleep in it, or even live in it for the duration of the holiday in memory of the period of wandering. There are lots of rules about building the Sukkah--generally the Sukkah roofs are built out of palm branches, and the sky must be visible through the branches. Sometimes the Sukkah are decorated--some around the Midreshet were hung with lights, or small squash.

I went for a Sukkot dinner on Wednesday, the first night of Sukkot, at my office-mate's house. We had kiddush in the Sukkah (a prayer before dinner. It was all in Hebrew, so I'm not sure what it was about, but it involved reading from the Torah and some sweet wine). We also ate some special bread before dinner--I'm told there's a rule about not talking between when you wash your hands and when the bread is served, and that it's common knowledge that this is when Jewish women think of the most important things to say. We didn't have our meal in the Sukkah, but had to eat it outside because it had been so hot all day.

I've put some pictures below of different Sukkah that people have built around the Midreshet.


The sukkah here is behind the giant aloe (?) plant between the two houses