Welcoming in the Ushpizin: Poems for Sukkot

Israel in Translation

We’re currently in the days of Sukkot, in which Jews everywhere dwell (or at least take their meals) in a temporary structure called a Sukkah to commemorate the forty years of wandering in the desert, and also because Sukkot is an agricultural festival as well, and in ancient times people lived in temporary shelters as they harvested.

One of the customs of Sukkot is inviting guests for meals into the Sukkah, close friends or needy strangers, as well as the supernatural —“Ushpizin” is Aramaic for “guests.”

Today we’ll hear poems that feature these ushpizin, from Orit Gidali’s book, Twenty Girls to Envy Me. The Selected poems of Orit Gidali.

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Text:

Twenty Girls to Envy Me. Select Poems of Orit Gidali. Translated from the Hebrew by Marcela Sulak. University of Texas Press, 2016.