Sukkot in the Southland
Rabbi Shalom Tendler talks to a guest and her son outside a sukkah during a Sukkot garden party at the home of Alan and Sharon Litman. Sukkot is a seven-day-long Jewish holiday celebrating God’s bounty and protection, and usually coincides with the end of the harvest. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Reuben Aboulafia reads the Mahazor prayer book inside the Litmans’ sukkah, a temporary shelter similar to the ones ancestral Jews lived in during their desert wanderings. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Sharon Litman, right, escorts 101-year-old Betty Matoff to the garden party. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Joshua Meyers, right, a student of Chabad of Newport Beach Hebrew School, is excited to learn of the candy wraps they will be making inside the sukkah they helped decorate at the home of Rabbi Reuven Mintz in Corona Del Mar. (Karen Tapia-Andersen / Los Angeles Times)
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Isaac Mintz, 9, shows off a messy green hand after helping to paint the sukkah. The Sukkot holiday is known as the season of our rejoicing.” (Karen Tapia-Andersen / Los Angeles Times)
Dina Blazer 9, walks into the sukkah that her family constructed in the backyard of their Stevenson Ranch home. According to Biblical tradition, sukkah roofs must be made of things that grow from the ground, such as bamboo reeds or palm fronds, and loosely arranged so the sky is visible. (Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times)
Sisters Rachel, 12, Shira, 3, and Dina Blazer, 9, (from left) read from a quilt that invites Biblical ancestors into the sukkah. We build sukkahs to show that ... we must put our trust in God, as he protected and sheltered us in the desert for all those years, said Rabbi Reuven Mintz. (Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times)
Reuven Firestone, left, and his wife Ruth Sohn infused and Egyptian flavor into their sukkah decor. Firestone, a professor of medieval Judaism and Islam at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, describes it as an oasis in the desert. (Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times)
