Each morning during the Expedition, players receive an email with their match for the day and three (3) challenges. Harnessing Sukkot themes, such as hospitality, openness, and celebration of harvest, challenges will get you to be silly, creative and thoughtful while getting to know your partner.
Be prepared to sing, dance, build, glue, and create. All three challenges will take no more than one hour to complete in total and no special supplies necessary.
A Sukkah is a temporary-dwelling place in which we dwell: we eat, hang out, and even sleep (weather permitting) in it. It must have at least two-and-a-half walls, and its roof is made of organic material (like leaves, branches, and wood) that allows for a clear view of the sky above.
One of the key values of Sukkot is hachnasat orchim, the welcoming of guests (or just plain old hospitality). There’s even a mystical tradition that our biblical ancestors join us each night of Sukkot as special visitors called ushpizin!
The ancient Israelites were agriculturalists, and Sukkot was a holiday of gathering and processing the harvest before winter. It was so important that the biblical name for Sukkot is HeChag – literally, the holiday.
Today, many Jews eat as many of their meals as they can within their Sukkah over the holiday. There’s even a special blessing before every meal, leyshev b’Sukkah (to dwell in the Sukkah).
One fun ritual to celebrate Sukkot consists of bringing together a palm frond (lulav), a myrtle branch (hadass), a willow branch (aravah), and a citrus fruit called an etrog. The ancient rabbis interpreted each of these Four Species as representing a different kind of Jew, all of whom were brought together on Sukkot.
On every day of Sukkot (except for Shabbat!), we gather our lulav and etrog together and shake them three times in each of six directions: east, south, west, north, up, down. You’ve really got to shake your lulav so it makes a flapping sound; some commentaries even refer to this as the sound of “trees singing” from I Chronicles 16:33.
What’s in a name? This holiday has LOTS of names: Sukkot (“booths”), Chag HaAsif (“Festival of Ingathering”), HeChag (“*the* Holiday”), and our favorite: zman simchateinu, the time of our joy!
Like on Hanukkah, on all eight days of Sukkot, we add a special morning service called Hallel. Hallel means praise and it involves lots of joyous song (think Chance the Rapper: “They want four-minute songs / You need a four-hour praise dance”).
