Celebrating Jews’ Past and Future : Joyful Rite of Sukkot Honors Flight From Egypt

Worshipers build a small shack in their back yards. They eat, sleep and pray there. They gaze at the stars, not the television.

They call it Sukkot, the feast of Tabernacles, and Jews have been celebrating it for thousands of years.

Sukkot isn’t as widely observed as Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah and is generally unrecognized by non-Jews.

But on Friday night, a small percentage of San Fernando Valley Jews will commence the eight-day holiday by blessing their newly constructed shacks and gathering at synagogues. They will honor the past--the security provided by God during their ancestors’ flight from slavery in Egypt--and the future--the new beginning Jews celebrate each year after atoning for their sins during Yom Kippur.

“It’s a holiday of great joy,” said Rabbi Yochanan Steppen, educational director of Emek Hebrew Academy in North Hollywood, a religious elementary school. “We’ve been judged by God on Yom Kippur, and just five days later, we have this new lease on life. We’re able again to have a year of goodness.”

Time to Celebrate

So Sukkot is a time to celebrate the triumphs of the Jewish people.

Perhaps the most significant victory was the exodus from Egypt. Upon escaping from Egypt and reaching the Sinai Desert about 3,300 years ago, the Jews were exhausted and hungry and had no shelter. With thousands of elderly people and small children weakening from the long journey, the situation was growing desperate.

“They didn’t have a 7-Eleven or a corner supermarket,” Steppen said. “How were they going to keep their food protected?”

The Jews decided to build tent-like booths.

According to the Torah, God then made coverings out of clouds, sheltering them from the desert’s hot days, cold nights and dangerous insects. For the next 40 years, as the Jews wandered the desert in search of the Promised Land--Palestine--the booths kept them alive and secure. Ever since, Jews have constructed a similar booth, called a sukkah, each fall to remember how their ancestors survived and how tenuous life remains. “We like to think of ourselves as impenetrable,” said Rabbi Daniel Gordos of the University of Judaism in Bel-Air. “But we’re not. By sitting in the sukkah, we remember how fragile and vulnerable life is.”

Said Richard Bender of Tarzana, who has put up a sukkah for the last 14 years: “I see it as our Thanksgiving, a chance to think of the harvesting of crops, of our roots.”

‘Part of Nature’

To emphasize the down-to-earth nature of a sukkah, Steppen said, the covering must be made from anything grown in the ground or easily detached from the ground, such as evergreens and palm tree leaves. “You want a part of nature that isn’t tainted by man’s use,” he said.

Yet the covering must not completely obstruct a view of the sky, “as you shouldn’t have a sense of permanence to it,” Steppen added. “It is to be a temporary dwelling.”

The dimensions vary. The sukkah must be built large enough to accommodate one person comfortably. Most are built to house a large family.

Because many Jews keep the sukkah’s wooden parts stored around the house, it takes only a few hours to build the entire structure. Most worshipers wait until immediately after Yom Kippur to assemble their sukkah. The booths are typically adorned with beautiful objects--as commanded by God--such as pictures depicting various stages of Jewish history, and fruits and ornaments. Some people bring modern appliances, such as telephones, into the sukkah.

As required by the Torah and Talmud--the written and oral laws of the Jewish people--observants should eat and sleep in the sukkah, and many do. But, Steppen said, if weather conditions are too unpleasant, it is permitted to sleep in one’s regular dwelling. “The holiday shouldn’t give one discomfort. It is a joyous occasion.”

Bless Harvest Symbols

Once inside the sukkah, Jews are supposed to bless the harvest symbols of the holiday: the palm branch ( lulav ), citron ( etrog ), myrtle leaves ( hadassah ) and willow twigs ( shannat ). These items are all held together and gently swayed in different directions--north, south, east, west, up and down--symbolizing the presence of God in all corners of the world and in heaven and on Earth. Jews also bring them to the synagogue, where they sway them several times. The symbols are usually purchased for about $40 at Jewish stores or schools in the Valley.

Besides observing the holiday’s rituals, Gordos said, Jews use Sukkot to renew their commitment to the environment and their less-fortunate brethren.

“It reinvigorates our desire to help the homeless,” Gordos said. “Plus, in some communities, it’s a time to think more about the nuclear arms race and what we can do about it.”

And it’s a time to help assimilate Jews who have never had an opportunity to celebrate Sukkot.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, with money raised by the United Jewish Fund, sponsors a program to help recent immigrants from the Soviet Union become members of the Jewish community. On Sunday, the federation’s San Fernando Valley division will hold a gathering of newly arrived Soviet Jews in Encino.

For Yakov and Yelena Neminov of North Hollywood, who arrived in the United States eight months ago, the opportunity to participate in Sukkot services was heretofore unimaginable.

“I feel that I am really Jewish now,” Yelena Neminov said through an interpreter. “It means that I have a big family. In Russia, the only Jewish holiday we celebrated was Passover. Now we can celebrate all of them, like Sukkot.”