Sukkot hut festival celebrates life of the Israelites

A BAMBOO hut festooned with local greenery, fruits and paper chains, and flanked by a Mediterranean-style villa, may seem an unlikely oasis in the noisy surroundings of Central.

But the sukkah, Hebrew for hut, and villa will stand on the terrace of a Duddell Street building this week for the seven-day Jewish harvest festival, or Sukkot, which began at sunset last night.

The structures represent the types that Israelites, thousands of years before Christ, used to build in the fields while taking in the harvest, and those in which they rested during their 40-year escape from slavery in Egypt, led by the prophet Moses, according to Rabbi Howard Kosovske, of The United Jewish Congregation of Hong Kong.

'It symbolises peace in the midst of turmoil in the world. One of the messages of the festival is sharing your goods with those in need,' he said.

The festival had been held each year at the Oleh Synagogue in Robinson Road, and this was the first one in Central, on the terrace owned by congregation member Robert Meyer.

The nearly 500-strong congregation - which was the largest among the 3,000 to 4,000 Jews in Hong Kong - had no synagogue, but would take up an office in the grounds of the Oleh in the autumn, said the rabbi.