Israel begins Sukkot, the Jewish holiday of joy celebrated in wooden cabins

Also known as the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, Sukkot remembers the forty years that the Jews spent in the desert after freeing themselves from slavery in Egypt, a journey in which, according to the Torah or Pentateuch, they lived in booths.

For this reason, in the days before Sukkot, it is common to see families in Israel buying wooden planks and setting up these improvised cabins, called sukkahs, which recreate the houses in which their ancestors lived in the desert and that now, in the middle of the century XXI, are also decorated with colored lights and equipment from which loud music comes out.

In fact, for seven days - which are school holidays in Israel - Jews must spend as much time as they can inside the sukkah and receive visitors there, something they experience as a commandment, but also a blessing.

Sukkot begins five days after Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement, the most important holiday in Judaism based on fasting, prayer and introspection, just the opposite of Sukkot.

The Feast of Tabernacles, which originates from the agrarian festivals of the ancient Hebrews, who thanked God for the harvest, became over time one of the three Pilgrimage Feasts of Judaism, along with Pesach and Shavuot, in those in which the faithful brought the early products of their harvests to the Temple in Jerusalem.

The typical products of this festival, with which specific prayers are made, are the palm leaf (lulav), the citron, a citrus fruit similar to lemon (etrog); the branch of myrtle (hadás) and willow leaves (aravot), which customers buy these in the street markets, many of them set up for the occasion.

While the most religious orthodox Israel celebrates this holiday immersed in its sukkahs, the most secular sector celebrates Sukkot with music and theater festivals, cultural activities, and craft markets throughout the country. EFE