Sukkot

Culture of origin: Jewish · Cultural

Holiday sources: Iran · Israel · Judaism

Sukkot, the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, begins on 15 Tishrei and is one of the three biblical pilgrimage festivals. It is both an autumn harvest festival and a remembrance of the Israelites' forty years in the desert after the Exodus. Families eat, and many sleep, in a sukkah, a temporary hut roofed with branches, and each day they wave the four species: a palm frond with myrtle and willow, and a citron. Kurdish Jews in Israel hold Seharane, their old festival of country outings, song and circle dances, during the intermediate days of Sukkot. In Kurdistan it followed Passover, for one day in Iranian Kurdistan; when the Association of Kurdish Jewry revived it in the 1970s it moved it to Sukkot, partly so as not to clash with Mimouna.