The Feast of Tabernacles in Early Seattle
Celebrating the ancient Jewish holiday of Sukkot with prayers and a makeshift booth at the local synagogue.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The festivities commemorating the flight from Egypt, or the Feast of Booths, were inaugurated at the Hebrew synagogue yesterday evening. This is one of the most joyous of the festivals of the Hebrew nation and is celebrated with a great deal of fervor. Rabbi A. Brown explains the significance of the festival, noting that the Torah commands, 'On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the increase of the land, you shall celebrate a festival to the eternal seven days.' As it is difficult to build permanent structures in the city, the custom has become for each congregation to build a large booth or tent on the right of the synagogue. After the service, the whole assembly goes in and partakes of a meal prepared in the tent, and prayer is said both before and after it.
“Ye shall abide in the booths seven days; every native born in Israel shall abide in booths, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to abide in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.”
While this historical account captures the struggle of maintaining ancient agricultural traditions in a growing urban center like late 19th-century Seattle, the Feast of Booths (Sukkot) remains a vibrant part of modern Seattle's Jewish life, with congregations across the city continuing to erect sukkahs every autumn.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.