The strangest thing about the Sukkot holiday is that we do not really know what we are celebrating. The Torah says: “You shall live in huts seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in huts (sukkot), in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in huts when I brought them out of the land of Egypt (Leviticus 23:42-43)”. Yet, nowhere in the entire Exodus narrative does it say that God made us live in huts.

There is, perhaps, no other time in the Jewish calendar year that we feel as vulnerable as we do on Yom Kippur. While this is true on every Yom Kippur, it is especially true today.

There is something bizarre about the holiday of Rosh Hashanah. Since it marks the New Year, a new beginning, it is, for most of us, a time of anticipation and joy. Furthermore, although the davening (prayer) is longer than usual, the synagogues tend to fill up with far more people than the numbers that typically frequent them during the year.