Giving Thanks

With the High Holidays barely over, many Jewish families already are busy hammering away in their backyards for the next celebration--Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles.

Sukkot is a harvest celebration that also honors the temporary dwellings that the Jews lived in during their biblical wanderings across the desert for 40 years to the land of Israel. It also is a time for families to build a similar three-sided booth--called a sukkah--in their own yards.

Three families in Fountain Valley who live next door to each other have been celebrating the holiday building sukkahs in their respective backyards for a decade.

The Ecker, Rosen and Bubis families, who all belong to the Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Fountain Valley, have been rallying to get their booths constructed in time for the start of the holiday at sundown today.

The top of the sukkah often is festooned with palm fronds, and the holiday ritual includes hanging fruits and vegetables from the hut’s apex to represent the plenitude of the harvest.

Sukkot comes near the end of several weeks of Jewish holidays, which started last month with Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, and will end next week with Simchat Torah, a celebration of the first five books of the Bible.

Some of the more observant--and hardy--Jews will sleep on the ground of the rickety shelters as well as eat there, to eschew the rote comforts of home and hearth and honor the trials of their ancestors.

The Fountain Valley families said it’s tricky to cram their clans into the huts to sleep, but they are dedicated to breaking bread in the huts, which measure 12 feet square.

“We do have every dinner in there for seven days,” Pam Rosen said, although they don’t sleep outside. “If my kids are outside having too much fun, they won’t get up and go to school the next day,” she said.

Linda Ecker said her family also tries to eat as many meals as possible--including the traditional stuffed cabbage and stuffed peppers--in the cozy confines of their sukkah. “My husband loves to eat his breakfast out there,” she said. “Frankly, sometimes it gets a little too cold for me.”