The Sukkah’s Significance

By Rabbi Steven J. Gotlib

This week’s Torah portion is Sukkot: Exodus 33:12 – 34:26, Numbers 29:23 – 28

In his book “Sacred Time,” Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik writes that “of all the holidays on the Jewish calendar, Sukkot … must surely seem to be one of the most out of place in today’s world.” He writes that “the thought of otherwise normal-seeming human beings freely choosing to conduct themselves, however briefly, in so blatantly primitive a manner must strike the onlooker as bewildering at best, if not downright inconceivable.”

It is, however, precisely this apparent “primitivity” that makes the holiday one of our most important on the Jewish calendar. Sukkot, Soloveitchik notes, was originally an agrarian harvest festival celebrated throughout the ancient Near East, which, remarkabl