Sukkot begins at sundown
The Jewish festival of Sukkot, also known as the Feast of Booths or Feast of Tabernacles, begins at sundown today.
The seven-day festival gets its name from the huts or “sukkahs” that Moses and the Israelites lived in as they wandered the desert for 40 years before they reached the Promised Land.
Jewish congregations in Oklahoma celebrate along with Jews across the world, God’s faithfulness to the Israelites. As they build sukkahs at their synagogues and temples, the structures serve as reminders that the Lord is still faithful today. In the 2005 photograph pictured at left are members of Temple B’nai Israel in Oklahoma City enjoying the sukkah built on temple grounds.
Many Jewish people also build sukkahs at their homes and eat and sleep in them over the course of the festival.
Meanwhile, Sukkot serves as a reminder to congregations of their agricultural roots and the harvest. People often hang papier-mache vegetables from the sukkah’s ceiling to signify that God blessed the Israelites with a harvest of food they needed to survive.
The sukkahs made by the Israelites were made of branches and were easy to assemble, take apart and carry. Jewish leaders said the sukkah’s shelter is always temporary — symbolizing that God provides His people with all they need as they seek His more permanent blessings of the Promised Land.
Each sukkah will include important symbols – branches of palm, willow and myrtle and the citron fruit, also called etrog. 
A branch of a palm woven together represents the desert or southern part of Israel. A branch with leaves of the myrtle tree represents the northern part of Israel and the , branches of the willow tree represent the eastern part of Israel. The fourth symbol is the citron fruit, or etrog (pictured at right in a recent AP photograph taken in Jerusalem).
Carla Hinton
Religion Editor
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