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A BRIEF GLOSSARY
| HAG SAME'AH |
Happy Holiday! This is a very useful greeting to know since it works on all three pilgrimage festivals. |
| HOL HAMO’ED |
The intermediate days of a festival. |
| SUKKAH (plural: SUKKOT |
A booth or temporary structure built generally in a family’s backyard and covered with leafy branches and stalks such that the sunlight penetrates the roof during the day and the stars can be visible through it at night. The sukkah remains up for the duration of the festival of Sukkot. |
| SUKKOT |
This is either the plural of sukkah or the name of the festival which follows Yom Kippur and commemorates the building of temporary booths by the children of Israel during their 40 year trek in the desert. |
| YOM TOV |
This term technically refers to the three major festivals in our Tradition: Pesah, Shavu’ot, and Sukkot. These festivals are not quite as sacred as Shabbat, but they are days when we refrain from work, attend synagogue, and enjoy festive meals in the company of family and friends. |
| ZEMAN SIMHATEINU |
Sukkot through Simhat Torah is referred to as zeman simhateinu, the time of our happiness. |
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Sukkot is
זמן שׂמחתינוּ
The Time of Our Happiness
 On Sukkot, the beginning of the rainy season in Israel, God determines how much rain will fall during the next 12 months.
And so each day of Sukkot, the people engaged in a ceremony called Simhat Beit HaSho’evah, the Joy of the House of Drawing.
Water would be drawn from a pool in Jerusalem and poured out upon the altar, a symbol of our trust in God’s faithfulness to provide us with the rain needed to grow our crops.
The rabbis understood “And with joy shall you draw water” (Isaiah 12:3), to mean that water is a symbol of God’s holiness and energy: to handle it, drink it, bathe in it, irriagate with it—are all manifestations f the miracle of life, and there can be no greater joy than that.
“Whoever has not seen the rejoicing around the the Beit HaSho’evah, has seen no rejoicing at all
(Mishanah Sukkot 5:1)
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September 4, 2010
25 Elul 5770
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Updated July 12, 2006 
