OCTOBER 17 • 2024 | 33

W

hen Sukkot arrives, Gwen, 11, and Nathan Elkin, 
9, know what’s coming. A flatbed truck with a 
sukkah on it pulls up, and dozens of family 
and friends arrive to celebrate the holiday together. 
For the last handful of years, except last 
year because it rained, the Elkin family has 
coordinated with The Shul to have its sukkah 
on wheels stop at their nearby West Bloomfield 
home. 
“It’s a tradition,” Gwen says. “I like how me, 
my family and friends can all get together and 
have fun”
.
Everyone brings some food to share, and they 
talk about the holiday. “We do a craft, and we hang 
it in the sukkah,” she says. “The truck goes to a lot of 
people’s houses, so we can see what everyone else put on 
the sukkah.”
Sukkot started this year on Wednesday evening, Oct 16, and 
the celebrations continue through Simchat Torah on Friday, Oct. 25.
It’s one of the Shalosh Regalim, the three pilgrimage festivals — the other 
two are Passover and Shavuot — that Jews in the time of the Temple would 
travel to Jerusalem to observe.

For Nathan, celebrating Sukkot is a way of 
showing he cares about his Judaism.
“I like supporting my religion and getting together 
with my Jewish friends and family,” he says. “We pray, 
we shake the lulav and the etrog, and we drive around in 
the sukkah.” 
The holiday is a chance to see God in the everyday, and it can empower 
us for the rest of the year as well, says Itty Shemtov, education director at 
The Shul. She highlights the way we enter the sukkah with our whole body 
as one special element. “It’s like a spiritual hug,” she says. “We enter God’s 
embrace to do this mitzvah.” 

Families interested in having the sukkah on wheels roll up to their house can sign up and pick a 

slot to host their own holiday party through The Shul’s website.

 All 
Aboard the 
Sukkah 
Mobile!

KAREN SCHWARTZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The family performs the Sukkot 
mitzvot in the “temporary hut” on wheels.

Nathan and 
Gwen Elkin

What’s Shaking?

Good question.
On Sukkot, people talk a lot about the Four Species, which includes 
a citron, a palm branch, myrtle twigs and willow branches. It’s a mitzvah 
to wave them together in six directions — forward, right, back, left, up 
and down — after reciting a blessing. 
And some people spend a lot of time trying to pick out an etrog 
that they think looks nice and smells great to make the holiday extra 
special.