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Harvey Belovski, rabbi at Golders Green United Synagogue:

 If you take a stroll through Golders Green in North London, you are likely to spot people scurrying to and from synagogues carrying long plastic sleeves and small cardboard boxes.  Despite appearances, the containers aren’t at all sinister, but hold items used to celebrate the week-long festival of Sukkot.

 Sukkot is a harvest festival, a chance to celebrate God’s bounty, as well as an opportunity to think deeply about the temporary nature of life.  We enjoy our meals, relax and sleep in a makeshift booth called sukkot – which named the festival.  Ours is beautifully decorated by my children, illuminated with rope lights and seats our family and a number of guests.  On dry nights, when I sleep in my sukkah, all I can hear is the rustle of the wind, the occasional nocturnal bird, oh, and my neighbours snoring in their sukkot!

 I imagine you’re wondering what’s in the plastic sleeve and the cardboard box.  Well, the sleeve contains a palm branch, tied together with two willow twigs and three cuttings from the aromatic myrtle evergreen shrub.  And in the box, there’s an etrog – or citron, a citrus fruit, which looks like a rather knobbly lemon.  It has a wonderful fragrance but tastes horribly bitter.  These four are held together and waved in all directions during prayers on Sukkot, expressing our belief that God fills the totality of existence.

These plants are used because they are mentioned in the Jewish Bible in connection with Sukkot, although it’s not clear why they were chosen.  Centuries ago, a great rabbi suggested that they symbolise key parts of a human being.  The palm branch resembles the spine, the etrog is heart-shaped, the leaves of the willows are long and slim, like lips and the myrtles look just like eyes.  The similarities are uncanny. And when held together, they represent an entire human being.  

I think this means that we have a chance, as it were, to see ourselves from the outside, as others see us, rather than as we usually see ourselves.  That’s an incredible opportunity.  Imagine having the opportunity, even just once a year, to see the good and the failings that others see in us, to explore them dispassionately and to hold in our hand the chance to change.  That might be the greatest cause of all for celebration.