Sukkot starts on Monday, a holiday of rejoicing after the solemn observances of Yom Kippur and the Days of Awe. To mark the day, I’ve gathered vignettes from Yizkor books from towns in Belarus and Poland. The Hasidim in Gorodets sang and danced. The “Festival of Joy” in Piotrkow Trybunalski describes the importance of finding a suitable estrog which “requires expertise in [its] quality, as it does, for instance, to choose the wine for the four cups on Passover.” In Lezajsk, “The children concerned themselves with the beauty of the Sukkah. Hangings made of eggshells and feathers, colored by singeing with a flame, hung from the ceilings.”
But as the Germans occupied Jewish towns, an account from the book of Chrzanow relates how celebrating Sukkot entailed risks because the commandment to eat and sleep in a sukkah meant it was not possible to hide in a house and observe Judaism there as on other holidays.
