Some of the strongest memories I have of my childhood are of building the family sukkah. No matter where we lived, in a house or an apartment, my parents always made sure we had a sukkah. Sometimes they were large, elaborate, freestanding structures and sometimes they were precariously assembled contraptions in which we were afraid to shake a lulav too hard for fear the whole thing would come down around us.

Building a sukkah was a family activity. My father designed and built one each year. And each year it was different. I don’t remember two years in which our sukkah looked the same or was even in the same part of the yard. They are so simple to make and nowadays, you can even order a ready-to-assemble kit online and have it delivered right to your door.

My mother always made sure the sukkah was decorated. We would string cranberries to hang, (I never saw a paper chain in a sukkah until I was an adult) and fresh fruits and vegetables (I never ate an eggplant until I was an adult either, but we always had them hanging in the sukkah). Of course finding skhakh, the covering for the top, was a challenge and usually demanded a ride to the outskirts of civilization. There were years when we stopped on the side of the road and cut bulrushes and years when we had corn stalks or pine branches or maple branches.

One year—I don’t remember how old I was or where we were living—my mother bundled us into warm clothes and put my brothers and me into our station wagon to go looking for skhakh. We drove down towards whatever body of water was near looking for the bulrushes. We followed the line of the water until we found a road which would give us access to the shore and ended up in a driveway in a poorer part of town. There were lots of bulrushes, some still in pod form and some already popped and blowing in the wind. And in the yard, there were a variety of little children, all different ages, only a few in coats and two (that I remember) without shoes.

My mother walked to the door of the house and asked the woman who answered if we could cut some of the bulrushes. We filled the back of the station wagon and my mother went back to say thank you. As the woman of the home proudly refused offer of payment for the bulrushes, I saw my mother turn back and ask her respectfully if she could give something to the children at least.

It wasn’t much, we didn’t have a lot ourselves, but she emptied her purse of coins and gave each child a quarter or dime. In a time of penny candies and 15 cent comic books, she gave them a treasure. And she gave me a treasure as well, a model of how to live a respectful, gracious life, rooted in Jewish practice.

What Sukkot is to me is a different kind of communal celebration from that of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Sukkot is more down to earth, no pun intended, and it is an opportunity to build memories with those closest to us while sharing with new friends as well.

Sukkot is a time for living Jewishly, for remembering that Judaism doesn’t end at the synagogue doors. It is infused in our lives and in everything we do.