The Festival of Booths

Last week was the Jewish holiday of Sukkot (to learn more, go here). As we read the passage in the Torah commanding this celebration, I asked why we hadn't built a sukkah. I was told we might build one...next year. Well! Tomorrow is but our hope, never mind a whole year from now!
Thus, my aunt and I transformed an ordinary clothes line into the same kind of fragile shelter our fathers dwelt in as they sojourned in the wilderness of Sinai.
Or at least the same kind of fragile dwelling they would have built had they had access to polypropylene tarps and wooden clothes pins.

The Torah is occasionally obscure in its meaning. Sometimes we have no idea what a passage or even a word really means (it is a dolphin skin, a unicorn skin, what!?)
But fortunately for us, the part describing the set holy-days is pretty clear and straightforward.
Do
This

OK

I've never been so happy I did!
There is something indescribably fulfilling in creating something that is a connection not only to millions of people around the world doing the exact same thing,
but to the ancient and enduring.

These holidays are touchstones for us:
things to touch and experience so that we might remember that we too were slaves and wanderers in search of our true selves.



But most importantly, we remember
the lover G-d who does not change from year to thousand year
yet somehow adapts to us in our present world

even as we build tabernacles out of tarps.