We have recently learned of an ancient Jewish celebration: the Sukkot.
This has WLBOTT written all over it! Temporary outdoor structures, agricultural roots, branches overhead, communal meals, ancient tradition, and a certain theological acceptance that the roof is not supposed to be particularly good.
As Elder G summarizes:
And there’s a lot here worth exploring seriously beneath the fun. Sukkot connects the harvest, the wilderness journey after the Exodus, hospitality, human vulnerability, joy, and the curious spiritual act of deliberately leaving the security of one’s ordinary house to spend time in something fragile.
This year’s Sukkot takes place from the evening of Friday, Sep 25, 2026 through Friday, Oct 2, 2026.
Sukkot, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles or Feast of Booths, is a Torah-commanded Jewish holiday celebrated for seven days, beginning on the 15th day of the month of Tishrei. It is one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals on which Israelites were commanded to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem. Biblically an autumn harvest festival and a commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt, Sukkot’s observance is characterised by festive meals in a sukkah, a temporary wood-covered hut, and the taking of the four species.
A sukkah is the name of the temporary dwelling in which farmers would live during harvesting, reinforcing agricultural significance of the holiday introduced in the Book of Exodus.
On each day of the holiday it is a mitzvah, or commandment, to ‘dwell’ in the sukkah and to perform a shaking ceremony with a lulav (a palm frond) bound with myrtle and willow, and an etrog (the fruit of a citron tree), collectively known as the four species.
[T]he Talmud in Tractate Sukkah derives the identity of the four species as a citron, a palm branch, two willow branches, and three myrtle branches. These are referred to in Hebrew as the lulav (palm branch) and etrog (Citron) or just lulav. The palm branch, myrtle, and willows are tied together, usually with palm leaves, and the citron is held next to the others.
willow bark contains compounds related to salicylic acid, and the history of those compounds eventually leads us to modern aspirin
cricket bats are made from the wood of the willow
Citron (Etrog)
a sweet smelling citrus fruit that is almost all rind and no pulp
once used as a perfume and moth repellent (reminds of of WLBOTT’s Eau d’Off™ double-duty perfume (details here https://www.wlbott.com/?p=66173 ))
Date palm (Lulav)
humans have cultivated date palms for more than 6,000 years, making them one of our genuinely ancient agricultural companions.
a single fruit cluster can contain more than 1,000 dates.
a roughly 2,000-year-old date seed was successfully germinated and eventually grew into a mature tree.
Myrtle (Hadas)
Myrtle belongs to the same enormous botanical family as eucalyptus, cloves, guava and allspice, the Myrtaceae.
a crepe myrtle has been part of the WLBOTT HQ landscaping since the late 70s
the myrtle is referenced in Kahlil Gibran‘s book The Prophet, as a metaphor for generosity: “And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space. Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.”
A New Testament Connection
There are many references (many by implication) that Jesus, through his Jewish heritage, participated in Sukkot.
The following excerpt is from Understanding Your Jewish Neighbour: Sukkot, by Dan Sered
Most Jewish festivals are closely connected with the agrarian cycle of Israel. Sukkot arrives at the end of the harvest season, just as the first winter rains touch the land. Sometimes referred to as the Feast of Ingathering, it is designed both as thanksgiving for the produce of the land and as a lived parable of dependence on the Lord.
Sukkot in the Time of Jesus In the first century, two Temple rituals in particular made this season especially significant. The first was the Illumination of the Temple. Enormous golden candelabra, each with four great lamps, lit up Jerusalem, casting light across the city. […] Against this backdrop, Jesus proclaimed, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’ (John 8:12).
Following the Ceremony of Light was the Water-Drawing Ceremony. Each day, priests drew water from the Pool of Siloam while the people recited Isaiah 12:3: ‘With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.’ On the climactic last day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” ’ (John 7:37-38). John explains that Jesus was speaking of the Spirit, who would later be poured out on all believers (7:39).
Through these declarations, Jesus identified himself with the very symbols of Sukkot: both the light and the water. What had pointed to God’s provision in the wilderness now found its fulfillment in him.
For Christians today, Sukkot offers at least three enduring lessons:
Dependence on God’s Provision. Just as Israel’s shelters were fragile, so are our lives. Sukkot reminds us that ‘unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain’ (Ps 127:1).
Rejoicing in God’s Presence. True joy does not come from the abundant harvest but from God himself. Jesus promises the Light of Life and Living Water, both resources that sustain us even in times of wilderness.
A Call to Hospitality. The sukkah is open to guests, symbolizing generosity and welcome. This, in Jewish tradition, is known as ushpizin, where it is considered a mitzvah (commandment or good deed) to invite different guests to join you for each night of the holiday. For Christians, this reflects the gospel’s call to extend hospitality, especially to the marginalized and the unreached, including our Jewish neighbors, demonstrating the love of Messiah in tangible ways.
A sukkah is essentially an outdoor hut that is covered with vegetation, known as sechach. But there are many guidelines and requirements that must be followed in its construction, and regarding the location where it is erected, in order for a sukkah to be deemed “kosher”—fit for use.
An important requirement is that there should be nothing between your sukkah and the open sky. So make sure that there are no trees, canopies or roofs of any sort overhanging your sukkah.
The Walls: The walls of a sukkah can be made of any material, provided that they are sturdy enough that they do not move in a normal wind. You can use wood or fiberglass panels, waterproof fabrics attached to a metal frame, etc. You can also use pre-existing walls (i.e, the exterior walls of your home, patio or garage) as one or more of the sukkah walls. An existing structure that is roofless or has a removable roof can also be made into a sukkah by covering it with proper sechach.
The Roof Covering: The sukkah needs to be covered with sechach—raw, unfinished vegetable matter. Common sukkah roof-coverings are: bamboo poles, evergreen branches, reeds, corn stalks, narrow strips (1×1 or 1×2) of unfinished lumber, or special sechach mats.
The sechach must be detached from its source of growth—thus a live trellis, or branches still attached to a tree, cannot be used.
You may use only vegetable matter that has not been previously used for another purpose. Additionally, it must never have acquired the status of a utensil (through being used as part of a crate or tool), nor have been capable of becoming ritually impure.
A sukkah must have at least two full walls plus part of a third wall (the “part” needs to be a minimum of 3.2 inches wide). It is preferable, however, that the sukkah have four complete walls.
The walls must be at least 32 inches high, and the entire structure may not be taller than 30 feet. In length and breadth, a sukkah cannot be smaller than 22.4 inches by 22.4 inches. There is no size limit in how large—in length and width—a sukkah may be.
There must be sufficient sechach to provide enough shade so that in a bright midday there is more shade than sun seen on the floor of the sukkah. The sechach has to be spread out evenly over the entire sukkah, so that there should not be any gap larger than 9.6 inches.
A sukkah must be built anew every year for the purpose of the mitzvah. This requirement, however, applies only to the sechach, since it is the sechach that makes the sukkah a sukkah.
We noticed that the measurement of “9.6 inches” came up several times in the Sukkot design requirements.
Our best guess is that this measurement represents 3 handbreadths:
Because ancient measurements are standardized differently depending on the historical legal opinion you follow (often based on the physical width of a man’s palm or thumb-breadths), modern rabbis and translators convert those ancient handbreadths into centimeters and inches. A standard conservative halachic calculation puts one tefach at roughly 3.2 inches (8 cm), meaning 3 handbreadths equals about 9.6 inches. – Elder G2
This rabbit hole led us to the non-proselytizing site “Convert-Me.com“.
The Cubit, Finally Explained
Simplicity itself: a cubit is two handbreadths.
A handy conversion chart:
A WLBOTT Harvest Festival
The WLBOTT Vibe
So many things we like about Sukkot, but especially its intentional impermanence.
We Bring our Harvest to Sukkot
We’ll use the WLBOTT Sukkot / sukkah to honor ancient traditions, but also to celebrate the WLBOTT Agricultural Extension (go Waggies!) harvest. Here’s a list of everything we grew in the garden this year: radishes, spinach, Chinese cabbage, potatoes, sweet potatoes, amaranth, mammoth sunflowers, sorghum, poblano peppers, cotton, okra, peanuts, and marigolds (this is true!). There was some success and some failures, a lot of bugs, an exercise in patience, and a great learning experience. The only crops still in the fields are peanuts, poblanos, cotton, sweet potatoes, and a few recalcitrant sorghum plants.
Our most recent harvest: (clockwise from left top) cotton, amaranth, sorghum, and a second variety of sorghum.
Let us acknowledge some of our other garden visitors: the pigweed flea beatle (nemesis of the amaranth), the eastern leaf-footed bug (nemesis of the sorghum), aphids (nemesis of the radishes and Chinese cabbage), mosquitoes (nemesis of our unpaid, uninsured interns) and fire ants (nemesis of all God’s creatures).
We also had a variety of mammalian visitors: a skunk, an armadillo, a cute but fearless bunny, several possums, and an army of squirrels. These guys mostly like to dig up everything, although the bunny like to chew the sweet potato vines. The squirrels, the most unwelcome of our mammalian visitors, would climb up the 9 foot stalks of the mammoth sunflowers and steal all the seeds.
The squirrels are more of an organized agricultural crime syndicate.
But we had some helpers also, feeding on the buffet of bugs or pollinating the blooms: lots of lizards, wasps, bees, bumble bees, and an occasional hummingbird.
The WLBOTT Design Committee
So many creative minds, with so many sukkah visions!
Okay! Let’s start with Bev, our HR director. She wants to make the sukkah as corporate as possible, sucking all the fun out of it and making it OSHA compliant. She wants to minimize expenses as well, so she will use old florescent lighting, old Amazon boxes for the sides, and will tape some old, dead flowers (that she received on Valentine’s Day, 2017) to barely meet the Sukkot requirements. She plans to serve pimento cheese sandwiches on white bread and tap water as refreshments.
Our next design comes from Sister Magdalena. She loves the idea of Sukkot, and wanted to give the sukkah an ecumenical feel, but her Catholic dedication led her to subconsciously steer towards a more Vatican-esque design.
Next we turn to Donna Bella-Donna‘s design, who expressed her love of alchemy and toxic plants in her design. She also added a few elements inspired by Hieronymus Bosch, while providing a big platter of her famous (or infamous) purple cookies. For lighting, she chose thick beeswax candles that leave big puddles of molten wax. It is perhaps not as inviting as we’d hoped.
Fred, our penitent intern, approached the sukkah design with youthful enthusiasm and perhaps a juvenile sense of humor.
Now we have a real artist, who is up to the task! Perch Periwinkle, of the La Mesa Periwinkles and our artist-in-residence, is delighted to be given the sukkah design challenge, and she creates a beautiful, large, welcoming space that reflects the best of WLBOTT! In addition to the artistically designed twine walls, there are mats on the ground for overnight stays. She’s incorporated living, vining flowers into the design. There is a banquet table that has a sampling of all the produce for the WLBOTT Ag Extension garden this year. She is very proud of her accomplishment!
Meet our newest unpaid staff member Kennetta (“Born of fire”)! We’ll have much to say about Kennetta and her brother Stephan in the coming days. Kennetta was our WLBOTT greeter on the first night of Sukkot.
How Can We Protect our Sukkot Structure?
The only insurance quote we could get had a $10 million deductible and an extra $500 annoyance / go-away fee for one-week coverage.
The Sukkot festival in Barcelona Jewish people commemorate their people’s exodus to the Promised Land and give thanks for the autumn harvests with Sukkot or the Festival of Tabernacles. The Sukkot festival will be held from 29 September to 6 October. The Jewish community will install different booths (sukkot) in the districts of Ciutat Vella and Les Corts.
