How goodly are your tents

At services this morning, the rabbi described Rosh Hashanah as a holiday of the heart, Yom Kippur as a holiday of the head, and Sukkot as a holiday of the hands and feet. Sukkot is a harvest festival, a celebration of nature. We build a sukkah, a temporary structure which is partially open to the sky, in which we eat meals with friends over the next week. We see the stars through the sukkah’s roof, and spend time outdoors, and ignore the coming winter.

Oddly, Sukkot appears to be a holiday without any popular holiday-specific songs. No work song about building the sukkah, no recursive children’s ballad about the quest to find an etrog, no chorus-heavy drinking song for after dinner in the sukkah. Perhaps it’s a deliberate choice to listen to nature instead of ourselves, though lunch in the sukkah today after services was hardly quiet. Perhaps it’s a decision not to disturb the neighbors in the evening. Or perhaps it’s a musical market waiting to be tapped.