Tales of the Feasts
Sukkot: the Festival of Huts and Booths


A sukkah-booth for the Feast of Sukkot.


The Torah tells us to live in booths for seven days. It is a mitzvah to live in booths during the Feast of Booths.

What kind of booth? Does the Torah mean to tell us that we should live in phone booths? No. The kind of booth we are to live in for seven days is called a Sukkah in Hebrew. A Sukkah is a little shack that we build outside of our houses. It is not big like our homes. It is not strong like our homes. It is not warm like our homes. It does not have a kitchen or a bathroom or even a proper bedroom. It is more like a tent. Even though we decorate it with the produce of the harvest and make it very festive to look at, it is still not as comfortable as our real homes. A sukkah is a booth you could live in for a little while, but you wouldn't want to live there long.

That is the lesson of the Sukkah. God told Israel that during the festival of Sukkot everyone is to move out of their regular homes and live in little booths for seven days. Why?

God said that we should live in sukkah's for seven days to remind us of when He brought us out of Egypt and led us in the wilderness. During those days, everyone lived in sukkahs, tents, booths and shacks that could be taken down and moved and set up someplace else. No one had a nice permanent home. Everyone depended on God for food and clothes and shelter. His cloud was a shade in the day and his pillar of fire was warmth at night.

By leaving our nice warm homes for seven days and living and eating our meals in the sukkah for seven days we remember that it is God that we depend on for our food, our clothes and our shelter.

When Israel was in the wilderness, God also lived in a sukkah. His sukkah was called the Tabernacle. It was a tent, not a like his permanent Temple in Heaven. For the seven days of Sukkot, we remember when God left his permanent dwelling place and came to live in a temporary dwelling place among us. The Torah tells us that the festival of Sukkot is a time of great simchah. Simchah means joy!

Living in the Sukkah for seven days is fun, but it is also a mitvah for talmidm!

Chayim B'Yeshua - Life In Yeshua

God made a promise to King David that only his children would be allowed to be kings of Israel. All the real Kings of Israel are born from David's children. That is why it is important that Yeshua is from David's family.

In the Days of Master, there had been no king from David's family for a long time. The prophet Amos had promised that one day God would return and rebuild David's fallen sukkah. That meant a new king from David's family would come.

Read Matthew 9:27, 12:23, 20:30, 21:9

What is the Name that the Master is called in these verses? Email the answer to Rabbi Stan by clicking here.

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