RE

Activity 1

What do all these items have in common?

Use the bunting below to draw your favourite part of a party. Is the food,   people, games? 

They are called festivals. 

Talk about some of the festivals we have celebrated at school. What story was the festival remembering? what was the festival like? Why is it important for religion to have festivals? Here are some images to help you. 

Activity 2

 Let’s look some more at Rosh Hashanah.

It is called a shofar. It is a horn that you blow. Jewish people sound a shofar to signal a New Year and to wake everybody up into action and good choices for the New Year.

This is called Challah Bread. It is a special loaf that represents the “ circle of life”

This is apple and honey. At New Year Jewish people wish for a lot of things. They want it to be a "sweet year” so eat apples dipped in honey.

What are your hopes for the year?

Write them down.

During Rosh Hashanah, Jewish people say “Shanah Tovah” it means Happy New Year. 

What items do you use when you celebrate a special occasion?

Write down what special occasion it is, draw 3 of those items and explain why you use them.  

Activity 4

Why are they having a party? To remember.

Sukkot commemorates the years that the Jews spent in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, and celebrates the way in which God protected them under difficult desert conditions.

The word sukkot means huts (some translations of the bible use the word booths) and building a hut is the most obvious way in which Jews celebrate the festival.

Every Jewish family will build an open air structure in which to live during the holiday. The essential thing about the hut is that it should have a roof of branches and leaves, through which those inside can see the sky, and that it should be a temporary and flimsy thing. 

Meaning

Most people nowadays live in houses or apartments with strong walls and a decent roof. Spending time in a fragile hut in the garden, or under a roof of leaves rigged up on a balcony gives them the experience of living exposed to the world, without a nice comfy shell around them. It reminds them that there is only one real source of security and protection, and that is God.

Similarly, the holes in the roof reveal the sky, and metaphorically, God's heaven, the only source of security.

Another meaning goes along with this: a Jew can be in God's presence anywhere. The idea here is that the person, having abandoned all the non-natural protections from the elements has only God to protect them - and since God does protect them this shows that God is there.

A sukkah must also have at least two walls and part of a third wall. The roof must be made of plant materials (but they must have been cut from the plant, so you can't use a tree as the roof).

Health warning

Jews don't live in these huts too completely; it depends on the climate where they live. People in cold countries can satisfy the obligation by simply taking their meals in the huts, but in warmer countries, Jewish people will often sleep out in their huts.

What Jewish law requires is that the hut should be a person's principal residence.

Origin

The festival is set down in the Hebrew Bible book of Leviticus: