Libraries and coffee shops are crowded for midterm week, but Jewish students have an alternative place to study, eat or even sleep – a sukkah.Members of Hillel, the Jewish student organization, built a sukkah, a temporary booth in front of the Student Union on Sunday.A sukkah serves as “a go-to place for Jewish students to meet each other and hang out,” said Moshe Cohen, Hillel coordinator and mathematics graduate student.Hillel celebrated the beginning of Sukkot by hosting “Pizza in the Hut” on Monday night. Dinner was served to about 30 Jewish students in the sukkah.Sukkot is a week-long Jewish holiday honored by spending time with family and community in the sukkah, which is usually decorated with fruits and vegetables of the harvest.Allison Harrison, music education freshman, helped decorate the sukkah before dinner with recycled materials, fresh fruit and paper chains. Harrison helped the group build the sukkah and said it was a bonding experience.Sukkot is an opportunity for Jewish students to “take a step back from an urban lifestyle and live like our ancestors,” said Jordan Despanie, biology sophomore.The minority of Jewish students on campus does not allow Hillel to receive enough funding to have their own facility, so the sukkah offers a unique refuge for Jewish students to socialize, Cohen said.The visibility of the sukkah attracts Jewish students who haven’t heard about Hillel, Cohen said.”While we were building the sukkah on campus, a new Jewish freshman walked by us with her friends, ran up to us and even hugged one of our members when she found out we were the Jewish student organization,” he said.Sukkot also has historical and biblical significance.Historically, Sukkot, or the “Festival of Booths,” celebrates the harvest. To encourage greater agricultural production, a booth was built by farmers’ family members in the fields where they would eat, pray or even sleep together during the harvest week.The holiday commemorates the 40-year exodus of the Israelites. The sukkah symbolizes the houses built and dismantled as the Israelites wandered across the desert.Hillel will be hosting “Hookah in the Sukkah” on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and will take down the sukkah Sunday at 1:30 p.m.
 
 
 
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