Sukkot / Mid-autumn festival

Restaurants have booths/sukkah
outside their main doors

This morning saw a sudden rise of tension in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound ... apparently arab youths again threw stones and bottles at Israeli police and this time the Israeli soldiers came in force and occupied the mosque area. It was very forceful as the military had little time to restore order in the compound because the jewish feast of Sukkoth begins tonight. It's the most tense moment among all the autumn feasts because some jews believe the messiah will return during this feast of Sukkoth so they must destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque and rebuild the Jewish Temple to hasten the Messiah's arrival. This usually means extremist jews entering the Al Aqsa compound trying/symbolically rebuilding the Temple by bringing in bricks. Muslims will feel provoked and react ... and the cycle of violence starts. It happens every year.

Inside a sukkah

Meantime I took a stroll around the New City this morning. Almost all the restaurants have sukkoth (meaning booths) outside their shops. It's stipulated that jews during the 8 days of this feast, must eat inside these booths and not indoors. It's rightly called booths and not tents because as you can see from the photos, it's square/rectangular and has branches as its roof. The sides are removable, usually made from wood planks, branches or nowadays plastic. It's meant to be a storage space where the autumn harvest was kept while farmers were harvesting; they'd eat in these outdoor booths and even sleep in them till the harvest is over. Sukkoth (singular is sukkah) is therefore the autumn harvest feast. Some people would hang fruit (real or plastic) inside the sukkah.

The Shawarma restaurant below Mandarin Restaurant had a sukkah built but placed it directly in front of Mandarin's door, blocking entrance to it. Ah Ling the manager was very angry and got her 2 male workers to re-position it in front of the Shawarma shop and threatened to tear it down if the Shawarma owners pushed it back to block her entrance.

Well Sukkoth is celebrated at the same time as our Mid-Autumn Festival ... so here's wishing everyone a happy mid-autumn. Don't overeat the mooncakes or piglets, though chinese tea is good is good for your health!