Don’t be surprised if you see a vehicle passing by with one of these mobile Sukkot attached to the back of it. This year’s Jewish holiday of Sukkot has been majorly altered because of the pandemic, but that’s not stopping anyone.
With many families celebrating Sukkot at home alone for the first time, this year Chabad emissaries are incorporating CDC [Center for Disease Control] standards into the holiday celebration by building a mobile sukkot to attach to the back of their trucks.
Rabbi’s all over Brooklyn are traveling the streets, looking for Jews to bring into the small Sukkah in the back of their truck so they can fulfill the mitzvah of shaking the Lulav and Etrog.
“We’ll come over and give you a few minutes to enter your temporary and safe sukkah,” one sign up sheet on a NJ Chabad website read. “You’ll be totally ‘in’ this mitzvah.”
While most Chabad Houses have to cancel the large events that the Sukkot usually holds, some have come up with innovative ideas like Chabad of North Brooklyn, who advertised on their website for a COVID-19 safe kids event, with individually packed crafts and a socially distant drum circle.
Chabad centers all over New York City are also offering full Sukkot-at-Home kits including all the holiday essentials—the lulav and etrog, a holiday guide, prayer book, candles and traditional treats.
Sukkot is the Jewish seven-day holiday that commemorates the wandering of the Jews in the desert on their way to the Promised Land.
The Sukkah represents the miraculous clouds that surrounded them on that journey and is immediately followed by the especially joyous two-day holiday of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, which ends at nightfall on Sunday, Oct. 11.
