The tent, in all its rules of construction, symbolizes that on Sukkot we leave our familiar, stable dwelling and move from the permanent to the temporary. We experience the precarious, the simple, the narrow.

We remember the wanderings, the vulnerability, and that the protection of the Eternal was with us then and we hope it will be with us in these days.

Time spent in the tent helps us to distance ourselves from the material goods that usually fill our surroundings. In our daily lives, we often surround ourselves with, cling to, depend on, and are surrounded by our possessions, our beautiful, precious objects.

Sukkot forces us to abandon them and return to a simpler, nomadic existence, even if only temporarily. Our priorities change, and our attention is focused on ethnicity, spirituality and the idea that all prosperity can vanish in an instant. We are forced to empathise with the experience of what it must be like for someone who has nothing, no shelter, who is forced to shelter in temporary shelters day after day.

The Festival of Tents takes us back to a time when the whole nation was homeless and wandering. In the desert, we often asked for help from neighbouring peoples and were often refused. It is customary to invite guests to sit and eat with us in the tent to show that we have learned from our experiences and to remember the importance of compassion in a world where material goods come and go easily.

The holiday of Sukkot is also good to realise how dependent we are on nature and how important our role is in preserving it.

By putting us outside our familiar world, Sukkot also changes our perspectives. We look at the world from a different perspective, we are in transition, we are in transition, nature is in transition and the community is in transition. In transition from summer to winter, from indoors to outdoors, and from the old year to the new.