The harvest festival of Sukkot, known as a time for rejoicing, commemorates our ancestors’ forty years journey in the Wilderness, during which God provided shelter and protection to the Israelites. We build sukkot, temporary huts in which we eat and sleep for a week. Sukkot remind of the impermanence of life and of our own fragility. There is a Kabbalistic ritual for this holiday known as Ushpizin (Aramaic for “guests”) in which we invite seven symbolic guests into our Sukkah. On each night of the holiday, we name one of the seven guests – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and Kind David – alongside his corresponding attribute, which is derived from the seven sefirot in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Today, many people also invite significant women from Jewish history to enter the Sukkah alongside these men. The Ushpizin ritual teaches us to value and celebrate our ancestors and the lessons we have learned from them.  

This year, Sukkot falls during National Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from September 15^th to October 15^th. My dear friend and lay leader at Jewtina Y Co, Luis Carrillo, created a beautiful Sukkot ofrenda ritual that fuses the Jewish ritual of Ushpizin with the Latin ritual of creating an altar, an ofrenda, to honor deceased loved ones on Dia de los Muertos. As Luis writes: “Latin families decorate ofrendas with flowers (often marigolds in Mexico), pictures of deceased loved ones, souvenirs, and loved ones’ favorite foods. The belief is that the offerings help invite the deceased ancestor from the land of the dead; it is a call that gets louder the more one is remembered.” In this ritual, Luis invites us to think of seven deceased family members or loved ones to honor as Ushpizin during Sukkot, and to create an ofrenda for them either inside or alongside our sukkot. On each night of Sukkot, as we invite the seven traditional guests, we also invite our loved ones, reflecting on the legacy they left behind for us. I am excited to incorporate this ritual into my Sukkot celebration this year, and I invite you to do the same.  

May this season of rejoicing bring us closer to the guests we welcome into our sukkot.