🛖Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles)

About Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles)

Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, is a seven-day Jewish festival of joy and thanksgiving that follows close on the heels of Yom Kippur. It recalls the forty years the Israelites spent wandering the desert after the Exodus, sheltering in temporary huts, and it doubles as an ancient harvest festival celebrating the gathering of the autumn crops. Its mood is deliberately happy — the Torah calls it "the season of our rejoicing" — a release after the solemn introspection of the High Holy Days.

The defining custom is the sukkah, a temporary hut roofed with branches and open to the sky, in which families eat, host guests and sometimes sleep across the week. The other great symbol is the "four species" — the lulav (a bound palm, myrtle and willow) and the etrog (a citron) — which are held together and waved in all directions during festive blessings. Meals, music and hospitality fill the days, and the festival flows into Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah at its close.

Sukkot begins on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, five days after Yom Kippur, so its Gregorian date shifts each year but always lands in autumn, usually late September or October. Like all Jewish holidays it begins at sundown the evening before. Whether you are building your sukkah or simply marking the festival, add Sukkot to your own page and the counter above shows exactly how long until it begins.