Sukkot and Simchat Torah

• The sukkah. A booth with at least three walls and a roof of cut branches, laid loosely enough to see the stars. Families eat their meals inside, and some sleep there too.
• The four species. Each morning except on Shabbat, worshippers hold the lulav (palm branch), etrog (citron), myrtle, and willow, and carry them in processions in the synagogue.
• Hoshana Rabbah. On the seventh day, worshippers circle the synagogue seven times and beat willow branches. The day came to be seen as the final sealing of the judgment of the High Holidays. Since the thirteenth century, many Jews have stayed awake the night before, reading Deuteronomy and Psalms, a custom later shaped, probably by the mystics of Safed, into a special order of study.
• Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. In Israel they fall on the same day, the 22nd of Tishrei. Elsewhere, Simchat Torah is celebrated a day later.

A chair for the guests

A teaching in the Zohar says that seven honored guests, the ushpizin, visit the sukkah: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and David, one leading each night. In Sephardic custom, an ornate chair covered with fine cloth is set in the sukkah, holy books are placed on it, and the host declares it the chair of the ushpizin.

In Moroccan homes, a small chair for the prophet Elijah, padded with Moroccan pillows, holds the family's Sukkot books. Some families read mystical texts each night from the book Hamad Elohim in honor of that night's guest.

A holiday with Babylonian roots. Reading the whole Torah in one year was originally the custom of the Jews of Babylonia, today's Iraq, while the Land of Israel followed a three year cycle. Most Jews adopted the annual cycle by the eighth century, and by the eleventh century its completion had become the festive day of Simchat Torah.

Hakafot. The scrolls are taken from the ark and carried around the synagogue in seven joyful circuits, the hakafot, with songs and liturgical poems special to each community. In Israel, many towns hold “second hakafot” outdoors on the night after the holiday.

Torah in a case. In many Middle Eastern communities, including Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Yemen, the scroll is kept in a tik, a hard case of wood, often covered in silver or velvet, that opens to reveal the scroll. The scroll is read standing upright. A Torah case at the Skirball Museum in Cincinnati, made in Bombay in the Indian Iraqi style, is embossed with the Ten Commandments.

The honors. The person who reads the last lines of Deuteronomy is the Hatan Torah, “bridegroom of the Torah,” and the one who begins Genesis is the Hatan Bereshit. The Yemenite and Egyptian rites traditionally had one honoree who did both, while other Middle Eastern communities added a third, the Hatan Me'onah. In some communities the honorees were showered with candy, and sometimes the honor went to a young man who had recently married.

A night of study

A visitor to Baghdad in 1871 described the community gathering on the night of Hoshana Rabbah to read through the whole Hebrew Bible, the Zohar, and the Mishnah. Afterward, the synagogue's Torah scrolls, which he estimated at about 400, were set out in cases covered with silver and gold.

Many Moroccan families, too, keep an all night study on Hoshana Rabbah, often in the sukkah. In Marrakesh the night was sweetened with pastries, fruit, and mint tea.

Morocco

Many families decorate the lulav with golden threads, line the sukkah with colorful fabrics and gold ribbons, and light it with bronze or copper lanterns. Cookbook author Claudia Roden describes rooftop booths draped with rugs, brocades, and silk shawls. A favorite Sukkot song is Sukkah ve Lulav, a poem by Rabbi Moshe Adahan of Meknes.

Iraq

Families built large booths in their central courtyards, covered with woven mats, hung with fruit, and lit with colored glass lanterns, where extended families often gathered together. Recordings made in 1959 preserve the Baghdadi poems sung during the hakafot.

Kurdistan

The Saharane was once a spring festival in Kurdistan, similar to the Newroz celebrations of the region. In Israel, Kurdish Jews now hold it every Sukkot. The largest gathering, in Jerusalem, has drawn about 13,000 people, and Muslim Kurds increasingly join in.

Yemen

Some families built the sukkah on a rooftop, roofed with date palm branches and decorated with pomegranates and citrus. Others built it in part of the house beneath a removable section of roof, using stalks from the wheat set aside for Passover matzah.

Ottoman Sephardic (Rhodes)

On the island of Rhodes, the sukkah was decorated with palm branches, myrtle, fruit, colored paper chains, and embroidered tapestries. Biscochos, Sephardic cookies, were hung alongside the fruit.

Bukhara (Central Asia)

Bukharian Jews roofed their booths with willow branches and hung wreaths of willow and wildflowers at the entrance. A photograph in the Library of Congress shows a Bukharian family in their sukkah around 1900, the father holding an etrog and lulav.

India

Jews from Baghdad who settled in India in the late eighteenth century brought their Torah cases with them. In Cochin, families built booths of bamboo and woven coconut palm leaves and invited neighbors and friends to share meals.

Foods of the season

Stuffed foods symbolize the bounty of the harvest: carrots filled with rice and meat in Syria, onions stuffed with rice and pomegranate in Lebanon, stuffed artichokes across the Middle East and North Africa, couscous with vegetables, and dates filled with nuts.

In the public school classroom

• Compare Sukkot with harvest festivals in other cultures, and discuss why so many traditions give thanks for the harvest.
• Study the sukkah as architecture: how did families in Baghdad, Marrakesh, Bukhara, and Cochin build with the materials around them?
• Look closely at a museum object, such as the Skirball's Bombay Torah case, and ask what it tells us about migration.
• Teach about the four species and the hakafot, but do not have students wave a lulav, recite blessings, or reenact a procession.

In Jewish schools and communities

• Decorate the school sukkah in a Moroccan, Iraqi, or Bukharian style, and set aside a chair of the ushpizin with holy books.
• Learn the Moroccan song Sukkah ve Lulav or listen to Baghdadi hakafot recordings.
• Hold a Hoshana Rabbah night of study, with mint tea and pastries as in Marrakesh.
• Invite families to share how their communities honored the Hatan Torah and Hatan Bereshit.

At home and with family

• Ask relatives: Where did our family build its sukkah? What hung from the roof? What did we eat?
• Read An Etrog from Across the Sea together with young children.
• Cook a stuffed vegetable dish from a community other than your own and share it in the sukkah.
• Record an elder's Sukkot and Simchat Torah memories for JIMENA's oral history project.