Welcoming Guests: Ushpizin / Ushpizot

Sukkot is associated with hospitality. We welcome guests into our sukkah; we appreciate the beauty of our friends’ sukkot and the meals they serve us there. We also invite ushpizin—imaginary honored guests, traditionally in the form of iconic male biblical characters. We suggest expanding your guest list to include women, portrayals of Jewish heroes, or people who have taught you lessons about hospitality.

Latest Rituals

“Whose breath is upon my skin?”
group of people decorating a sukkah
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three people building sukkah

Bringing mindfulness to the act of welcoming guests through a chant and series of ritual intentions

Eight Ritual Steps of Hakhnasat Orkhim (Welcoming Guests)

Welcoming historical and mythical ancestors

Welcoming Queer Ancestors to the Sukkah

Mystical sukkah guests

Ushpizin/ata

“I struggle this year to choose who to invite”

Psalm for Sukkot

“We don’t invite guests into the sukkah to be polite”

For a World of Radical Belonging: A Sukkah Blessing for the World Still Here and the World We are Building
I in the Sukkah

In this place, any one of us can be.

When You are the Ushpiza: Inviting Your Authentic Self Into The Sukkah

The Reconstructionist Network

Learning to Say "We": Writing Identity

In this immersion, we will reflect and expand on our personal experiences of identity, using writing exercises and in-depth discussions to think about, challenge, discover, explore, and experiment with different ways to identify ourselves, to consider how those ways connect us to and separate us from others, and how they represent and misrepresent aspects of who we are.

Four sessions, starting June 15th

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