Happy Sukkot!

We celebrated Sukkot for the first time yesterday. It always seemed to creep up on me right after the High Holy Days, and so I’ve never given this lovely holiday a try. It was my friend A’s idea to build a sukkah, and we quickly volunteered our husbands for the job. They grumbled for a while, but with the addition of a new Jewish friend, S, who had always wanted to build a sukkah, they agreed.

The Festival of Sukkot is a time of rejoicing and has dual significance: historical and agricultural. It commemorates the 40 years that the Jews wandered in the desert, living in temporary shelters. It is also known as the harvest festival, similar to Thanksgiving. Jews are commanded to “dwell” in a temporary structure for seven days- which means eating, praying, and even sleeping in the sukkah if possible. The roof is supposed to be made of something that grew from the ground and was cut off. Luckily, Santo Domingo has plenty of palm fronds and other plants just waiting for us to repurpose them. Here’s my source- feel free to read more about it.

So anyway. Our three families got together yesterday along with some other invited guests. It was hotter and more humid than usual, so the kids ran around spraying each other with water bottles while the dream construction team got to work. The women folk had slaved away in the kitchen earlier, so we created paper chains in the air conditioning. 

The guys did a terrific job creating the structure. Next, it was time to decorate. Our friend N had the great idea of hanging plastic fruit in our sukkah, which is preferable to fresh fruit in this tropical heat. The kids took turns hanging their chosen fruit. We hung some pictures and paper chains and called it a day. There were harvesty foods to eat!

The Dream Team

And 'dwell' in it we did!

It was an exhausting and terrific day. And as my husband pointed out last night when I complained of exhaustion, I didn’t even do any construction. A big thank you to our hosts (another B family) as well as all the friends who joined us. I am grateful for our Jewish community here in Santo Domingo! I can’t believe I helped build a sukkah this year. Of all the things I didn’t expect to do in the DR!

(oh, and by the way…our Sukkah may be violating some rule or another – there are so many- but please, just don’t tell us…)