✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡

For forty years, as our ancestors traversed the Sinai Desert, following the Exodus from Egypt, miraculous "clouds of glory" surrounded and hovered over them, shielding them from the dangers and discomforts of the desert.

Ever since, we remember God's kindness and reaffirm our trust in His providence by dwelling in a sukkah--a hut of temporary construction with a roof covering of branches--for the duration of the Sukkot festival. For seven days and nights, we eat all our meals in the sukkah and otherwise regard it as our home.

WHAT IS THE DEEPER MEANING OF SUKKOT? RABBIE BOTTON EXPLAINS.

The article continues below.

Another Sukkot observance is the taking of the Four Species:

✡ an etrog (citron),

✡ a lulav (palm frond),

✡ three hadassim (myrtle twigs) and

✡ two aravot (willow twigs).

On each day of the festival (excepting Shabbat), we take the Four Species, recite a blessing over them, bring them together in our hands and wave them in all six directions: right, left, forward, up, down and backward.

Our sages in the midrash tell us that the Four Species represent the various types and personalities that comprise the community of Israel, whose intrinsic unity we emphasize on Sukkot.

Sukkot is also called The Time of Our Joy. Indeed, a special joy pervades the festival. Nightly Water-Drawing Celebrations, reminiscent of the evening-to-dawn festivities held in the Holy Temple in preparation for the drawing of water for use in the festival service, fill the synagogues and streets with song, music and dance until the wee hours of the morning.

The seventh day of Sukkot is called Hoshaanna Rabbah, meaning Great Salvation. It closes the period of Divine judgment begun on Rosh Hashanah. A special observance is the aravah--the taking of a bundle of willow branches.

✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡

This is lightly modified article originally published by chabad.org at http://www.chabad.org/holidays/JewishNewYear/template_cdo/aid/4784/jewish/What-Is-Sukkot.htm