Question 1

What is Sukkos?

Accepted Answer

The seven-day festival of huts, beginning on the 15th of Tishrei. The word means “huts” or “booths.”

Question 2

What is a sukkah?

Accepted Answer

A hut with walls and a roof of s’chach, where we eat and spend time during Sukkos. Plural: sukkos.

Question 3

What are the Four Kinds?

Accepted Answer

An esrog, a lulav, hadassim and aravos: what each one is, and why the Torah asks us to hold them on Sukkos.

Question 4

Do I shake the lulav on the first day this year?

Accepted Answer

No. The first day, Sept 26, is Shabbos, and the Sages ruled that the lulav is not taken on Shabbos. It may not even be moved (it’s muktzah). The first time is Sunday, Sept 27, with the brachah and Shehecheyanu.

Question 5

Do I have to sleep in the sukkah?

Accepted Answer

Why we leave the sukkah plain, and why we eat in it but don’t sleep there.

Question 6

What if it rains?

Accepted Answer

On the first night you must at least make Kiddush and eat a kezayis of bread in the sukkah. Chassidic custom, from the Baal Shem Tov, is to keep eating in the sukkah even when it rains.

Question 7

What is Hoshana Rabbah?

Accepted Answer

The seventh day of Sukkos (21 Tishrei), when the judgment that began on Rosh Hashanah is finally sealed. We circle the bimah seven times with the Four Kinds and beat a bundle of aravos on the ground.

Question 8

What happens on Simchas Torah?

Accepted Answer

“Rejoicing with the Torah”: the day we finish the yearly reading of the Torah and begin it again, with joyous dancing. Outside Israel it is the day after Shemini Atzeres. Meals are eaten in the house, not the sukkah.