Five days after Yom Kippur, we celebrate Sukkot, one of the shalosh r’galim, the three so-called pilgrimage festivals. While each of these holidays has a specific historical framework, a unique spiritual theme, and an individual agricultural aspect, they all celebrate the bounty of the land. Sukkot, however, is the quintessential harvest festival.
Its annual commemoration of the wandering of the Jewish people in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land leads worshipers to a profound and inspiring spiritual lesson: that one of the most effective paths an individual can follow to faith in God is the one along which the fragility and ephemeral nature of life are taken truly to heart and allowed to energize and inspire the human spirit.
- Alan Lucas in his chapter on the Holidays from The Observant Life