In his novel The Rabbi (McGraw Hill, 1965, pp.38-39) Noah Gordon captured the sukkah’s power in this conversation between the protagonist Michael’s observant Zaydeh and his assimilated daughter in law, Michael’s mother Dorothy:
“’Why do you bother?’  Dorothy asked him once when she brought a glass of tea to where he (Zaydeh) strained and perspired to raise the hut.  ‘Why do you work so hard?’

‘To celebrate the harvest.’

‘What harvest, for God’s sake?  We’re not farmers.  You sell canned goods.  Your son makes corsets for ladies with big behinds.  Who has a harvest?’ He looked pityingly at this female his son had made his daughter.  ‘For thousands of years, since the Jews emerged from the Wilderness, in ghettos and in palaces they have observed Sukkos. You don’t have to raise cabbages to have a harvest.’ His big hand grasped Michael behind the neck and pushed him toward his mother. ‘Here is your harvest.’  She didn’t understand and by then Zaydeh had been living with them long enough not to expect understanding from her.”

On the first day of Sukkot we read from the Torah: “You shall dwell in booths seven days; that your generations may know that I (God) made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 23:42-43)

There is no overstating the importance of the Exodus.  Celebrating Passover is not enough.  Singing the Mee Chamocha from the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) at every morning and evening service is not enough.  Even when we celebrate our harvest festival, the sukkah reminds us of the debt we owe the Almighty for freeing us from lives of drudgery in bondage in order to allow us to use our talents to create a more just, caring and compassionate society on earth.

What else does the sukkah teach us today?  When we sit in the sukkah, we have no protection from the sun, the wind, the heat or the cold.  Our Sages encourage us to leave the sukkah to escape a driving rain, but far too many people in our world, and maybe even in our own city, do not have dry warm-in-winter, cool-in-summer homes to which they can retreat. 

In  terms of building Jewish identity, I have never seen a Jewish child who helps build and decorate a sukkah feel jealous, sad or left out at Christmastime when all of his or her non Jewish friends are trimming their trees, and he or she is not.  We should encourage our children to invite their non-Jewish friends to their sukkah and help to put up decorations.  Then in December they can admire and even help decorate their friends’ Christmas trees without feeling the need to have one of their own.  In this way the sukkah not only helps children feel proud of their Judaism; it helps them foster understanding and mutual respect with their non-Jewish friends.

Yes, Rabbi Petuchowski was right.  Building a sukkah and understanding its lessons is worth six months of Sunday school.  As I ponder the pleasure our sukkah gives us and the role it has played in shaping the Jewish souls of my three now grown children, I even think that my teacher might have even understated the case.