How to Celebrate an Interfaith Sukkot
Or how to build a sukkah and what to do with it once it’s built!
by Jewish Gentile Couples
Names carry meaning. The Jewish holidays are all named for their central activity or the key historical event that’s meant to be commemorated. Some of the most special holidays, the fall feasts culminate with Sukkot, which is so named for the sukkah—a temporary outdoor dwelling place.
Holidays invite participation, and Sukkot does that in some fun and interesting ways. Most of those ways actually revolve around the sukkah itself.
The sukkah is a place to celebrate, a place to remember a time when the Jewish people wandered in the desert. It may seem counterintuitive to purposely call to mind, year after year, a time when your people were struggling, even lacking in a sense. A whole generation died out in Sinai. The ones who lived, lived through nomadic movement from place to place and were more than a little bit kvetchy about the lack of menu options (among other things).
Yet as Tolkien said, “Not all those who wander are lost.”¹ When the Jewish people were wandering, they weren’t lost; that part of their story was actually formative to their DNA as a nation.
And celebrating the festival can create formative memories for you as a family. Let’s explore how you can find meaning in the traditions of Sukkot as a Jewish-Gentile couple.
Make a Sukkah (or Your Version of a Sukkah!)
You can find intricate instructions for building a sukkah online if you want to. But if “perfectly imperfect” were a sukkah-building style, we think it’d be our style! And it can be your style too. So, simply create an outdoor hang-out space with whatever you have on hand. Let your loved ones help you personalize it by hanging their favorite decor! Some people use flowers, pictures and fabrics, or greenery. Getting creative helps the sukkah feel more yours.
Then, use the sukkah during the week as a place to gather, a place to eat a meal or two if you want to. Some Jewish families even sleep in them!
This funny cultural activity is a way of imagining ourselves in the ancient story. While we might not exactly want the full experience that the Jewish ancestors had in the wilderness, we can certainly have fun taking some steps in their sandals.
The people of Israel lived in tents for 40 years with God as their provider. As they celebrated Sukkot within the Promised Land, the story was passed down l’dor v’dor (from generation to generation) so future Israelites could say, “My grandparents taught me what it meant to dwell with God and with one another.”
So, let your homemade gathering place spark your imagination, and take time to wonder together: What would it have been like to live outside like this year-round?
Practice Gratitude
Some people call Sukkot “Jewish Thanksgiving.” And we kind of agree with them! Thankfulness is a big part of the holiday.
The sukkah is the destination; celebrating the provision in your life is part of the journey of getting there.
Different kinds of sacrifices were part of the original holiday, including bringing a portion of the fall harvest as a thanksgiving offering to God. Today, Jewish people have continued that tradition by schlepping special foods into the sukkah and sharing them with friends and family.
Try taking the idea of thankfulness a step further and bring some journaling materials into the sukkah with you too! Take a moment together to write down the things you are all thankful for. That may include the food on your table as well as the people you’re sharing it with.
For an extra thankfulness prompt, try looking beyond what you can see and touch. When the Israelites wandered in the desert, God cared for their spiritual needs as well as their physical ones. What are some less obvious gifts that may make it onto your list? Some of those might even be the ways you’ve been comforted through the hardships in your life.
Be Hospitable
After all, it’s tradition! At Sukkot, it’s incumbent upon people in the Jewish community to provide hospitality. That’s a fun aspect of the holiday that you can easily implement in your own home—or not so easily, depending on how you look at it. There’s a saying that goes, “Where there are three Jewish people, there are four opinions.” We think it’s definitely possible that this saying can apply to other people groups and cross-cultural families too.
So, unless you plan on celebrating in your own personal pop-up sukkah (yes, they exist!), it’s likely your celebration might not be quite as peaceful or quiet as you might have imagined.
Yet that image of peace and quiet is part of the reason for building a sukkah. Maybe when you think of Sukkot, you imagine a sturdy structure decorated with flowers and pretty fabrics. You picture your loved ones talking and laughing, at ease, with a pile of food that’s prepared for them. It’s a restful time, an intentional break from your busy life.
It sounds idyllic, and maybe some years you’ll feel like you’ve reached that ideal (or at least come close), while other years may feel a bit more haphazard. The sukkah can change with your family’s needs and stages each year. And the more quickly thrown-together years can be fun too. Perhaps the changeableness of the sukkah (and the fact that people can still enjoy it no matter what it looks like) can be a reminder that when it comes to holidays and traditions, we have a part to play—but we’re not responsible for making everything okay.
So open the door—whether you’re leading the way to a table with a pot of coffee outside or something a little bit fancier. Recognize that being together is what matters. And remember that the tradition of hospitality really started when God was hospitable to the Israelites in the desert—through their imperfections, disagreements, and complaints about quail!
Read Timeless Truths
If you want to pick up a biblical perspective, you can read about the Feast of Tabernacles in the Torah. If you enjoy the New Testament, you can also read about Sukkot in the life of Jesus.
In the Old Testament (Leviticus 23), God gives the original instructions for Sukkot. There, you can find out more about His intent for the holiday and what it meant to the Israelites. (Spoiler alert: it’s about a party!)
The New Testament also records a time when Jesus celebrated Sukkot (John 7). On Hoshanah Rabbah (literally, the great day of the feast), he gave a short sermon.
It’s likely that a Jewish tradition about water during Sukkot informs John’s account. John records how Jesus referenced this idea from Isaiah: “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (12:3).
Sukkot is a time of joy, and it’s a time to reflect on how God is a source of fruitfulness. For ancient Israel, fruitfulness couldn’t happen without water. Most of us aren’t living an agricultural lifestyle, so that might be hard for us to imagine. But the stories give us the context we need to make imagination come a little closer.
During Sukkot and all our holidays, culture comes to life. Re-learning (or perhaps reading for the first time!) the stories that set history in motion can help you do that as a Jewish-Gentile couple.
Why Tents?
Moses’ instructions for the Israelite encampments described many tents spread out around the Tabernacle of the Lord in the center. That order signaled that God was dwelling with them, in the middle of it all.
When you’re in your homemade sukkah, it might not feel like the sturdiest dwelling you’ve ever inhabited. Like the tents of Israel, yours will let in light and air (and even a little bit of weather). The sukkah is not impervious, but it is still a place to rest.
We think it’s no coincidence that Sukkot both begins and ends with a rest day. In fact, the foundation of all of Israel’s feasts was Shabbat. Shabbat signals dwelling or resting together. So just as the ancient Israelites were given rest and safety (even in the desert), may you and yours have a true place to come home to, a true place to rest.
So, end your Sukkot celebration with a psalm like this one: “God is my refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:1, 10).
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End Notes
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 167.