Shabbat Table Talk for Chol Ha-Moeid Sukkot

We are so blessed in this season because it is just so full of holidays!  Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur have passed and we are now in the midst of one of my favorite holidays: Sukkot! 


Sukkot, much like the American holiday of Thanksgiving, is a harvest holiday when we thank God for providing food for our tables and a roof over our heads. 


Now, probably very few of us have our own sukkot ("sukkot" is the plural of "sukkah") at our homes.  But we have one here at Temple that everyone can make use of, and in Israel, if you walked around Jerusalem now you would see SO many sukkot!  Even restaurants have their own sukkot so people can eat out at a restaurant, but still observe the mitzvah of eating inside the sukkah.


There are a number of wonderful mitzvahs that we do on Sukkot:


(1) Shaking the lulav and the etrog
(2) Spending time in the sukkah (sleeping in the sukkah even!)
(3) Eating in the Sukkah
(4) Inviting guests into the sukkah.


I would like to fovus on that last mitzvah:  Inviting guests into the sukkah.  This is one of my very favorite traditions of Sukkot.  This is called "Ushpizin," or "Hachnasat Orchim," welcoming guests.  It is traditional to invite people into the sukkah to share a meal and a great conversation. 


So my question to all of you this week, that I hope you can take some time with your family to talk about (around your Shabbat dinner table, or in your Sukkah, or just sitting on the couch on Shabbat afternoon):


If you could invite anyone, from any time period (past, present, or future), into your Sukkah to share a meal and have a conversation, who would you invite?  What would you want to talk about?  Why?


Or, if you have lots of ideas, there are 7 days of Sukkot.  Who are your top 7 people you'd like to invite into your Sukkah?






Shabbat Shalom & Chag Sameach!