Sukkoth

Sukkoth

 

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Sukkoth is the holiday of physical symbols.  The hut, the branches, the fruit. It feels like a throw back to a ritual that Fraser might  describe in the Golden Bough. Water symbols, fertility symbols, trees, vegetation.  Sukkah comes from the word meaning cover.  We cover our behinds.

 

The sukkah has a special symbolism for me( i.e here comes the holocaust stuff).  I think of how my mother lived in the Polish woods during the war.  She did not have a Sukkah, not even that meager protection from the cold was available to her.  She did not have warm clothes. nothing.  Now she is dead and out in the cold again. She is the source of tumah.  The sukkah may not be made from material that is susceptible to tumah.