Every Jewish holiday revolves around an iconic food, but Sukkos seems to lack its own unique dish—unless eating itself is the entire point.
No Holiday Without a Menu
Why are Jews so obsessed with food?
Think about it. Every single Jewish holiday revolves around food, and almost every one has its own iconic menu item. On Shabbos, we eat challah. On Passover, matzah. On Shavuos, dairy and cheesecake. On Rosh Hashanah, apples dipped in honey and pomegranates. On Erev Yom Kippur, we eat kreplach. On Hanukkah, latkes and donuts. On Purim, hamantaschen.
But what on earth do we eat on Sukkos? Is it even possible to have a Jewish holiday without a special food connection?
Recently, someone told me that the official food for Sukkos is stuffed cabbage. But when I looked into why people eat stuffed cabbage, I discovered it’s actually a custom for Simchas Torah—because stuffed cabbage rolls look like rolled Torah scrolls. That has nothing to do with Sukkos itself. So we are right back to our original question: How could there be a Jewish festival without a designated dish? In Jewish life, doesn’t everything involve food?
Don’t worry—Sukkos is deeply connected to food. The Torah commands us, “In sukkos shall you dwell seven days” (Leviticus 23:42). Our Sages explain that “dwelling” means living in the sukkah just as you live in your home (teshvu k’ein tadduru). As the Alter Rebbe writes in Shulchan Aruch (section 739, paragraph 1), just as a person resides in their home all year round, the Torah obligates them to leave their house and reside in the sukkah with their beds, bedding, and household furnishings.
In paragraph 4, he goes on to define what dwelling in a sukkah actually entails: “How does one fulfill the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah? One should eat, drink, sleep, relax, and reside in the sukkah.”
When you look at Jewish law, the primary way we fulfill the mitzvah of sukkah is specifically through eating. In fact, we only recite the blessing Leishev BaSukkah—thanking G-d for commanding us to dwell in the sukkah—when we sit down to eat a meal of bread or grain.
Furthermore, halacha establishes that if someone is experiencing real discomfort (mitza’er), they are exempt from sitting in the sukkah. Yet on the very first night of Sukkos, the law requires you to eat inside the sukkah no matter what. As the Alter Rebbe writes in paragraph 17: “On the first night of the festival, one must eat inside the sukkah even if it is raining, and even though he suffers from the rain—and normally anyone who suffers is exempt—nevertheless, on the first night he is obligated to eat in the sukkah.” He compares this directly to the obligation of eating a kezayis of matzah on the first night of Passover.
So Sukkos is completely bound up with food! Even though there isn’t one specific recipe designated for the holiday, the entire mitzvah of sukkah hinges on eating.
Home Is Where the Bed Is?
Now, this should strike us as a bit strange. What truly defines a person’s home? Is it where they eat, or where they sleep?
Throughout the week, you might eat in all sorts of places outside your house—at restaurants, work lunches, or a friend’s dining room table. But when night falls, you go home to sleep in your own bed. In modern America, hardly anyone eats every single meal at home; statistics show that most people eat out multiple times a week. Where you eat doesn’t prove where your home is, but where you sleep certainly does.
So if the Torah tells us that sitting in the sukkah means “living there just like you live at home,” why is the core of the mitzvah tied to eating? Wouldn’t it make more sense for sleeping in the sukkah to be the main requirement, with eating just as a secondary detail?
What Miracle Are We Actually Celebrating?
To understand this, we have to step back and ask a fundamental question: What miracle are we actually celebrating on Sukkos?
Every Jewish festival commemorates a specific miracle that G-d performed for us. Passover marks the Exodus from Egypt. Shavuos marks the moment G-d spoke to us at Mount Sinai and gave us the Torah—the greatest revelation in history. Hanukkah recalls the miracle of the oil flask. Purim celebrates our salvation from Haman’s decree.
What miracle are we commemorating on Sukkos?
Everyone knows the standard answer: Sukkos recalls the miraculous Clouds of Glory (Ananei HaKavod) that surrounded the Jewish nation in the desert. As the Alter Rebbe writes at the very beginning of the Laws of Sukkah in Shulchan Aruch, G-d “surrounded them with clouds for shade so the heat and sun would not strike them… and as an example of this, He commanded us to make sukkos made for shade, so that we recall His wonders and awesome deeds.”
That is a beautiful and famous explanation. But the Talmud in Tractate Sukkah (11b) reveals something surprising. The Gemara quotes a debate: “‘For in sukkos I caused the Children of Israel to dwell’—these were the Clouds of Glory, according to Rabbi Eliezer. But Rabbi Akiva says: They made actual physical huts (sukkos mamash).”
According to Rabbi Akiva, the sukkos we build are not symbolic of heavenly clouds at all. They simply commemorate the basic wooden shacks the Israelites built to shelter themselves in the wilderness. And this fits the literal words of the Torah in Leviticus (23:42-43): “In sukkos shall you dwell seven days… so that your generations will know that in sukkos I caused the Children of Israel to dwell when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.” The verse doesn’t mention clouds; it mentions huts.
This raises a glaring question according to Rabbi Akiva: If we are building a sukkah just to remember that our ancestors lived in temporary shacks in the desert, where is the miracle? What is miraculous about living in a hut?
The Longest Miracle in Jewish History
The answer is that Sukkos isn’t just commemorating physical huts; it commemorates the longest continuous miracle in Jewish history.
Think about all the famous miracles in our history—almost all of them were short-lived. The splitting of the Red Sea lasted one night. Each of the ten plagues lasted a week. Purim unfolded over a brief period. The flask of oil burned for eight days.
But the greatest, most sustained miracle of all—one that lasted for forty consecutive years—was the manna. For four decades in a desolate wasteland, millions of men, women, and children ate heavenly bread every single day. Yet if you look at the Jewish calendar, there is no standalone festival dedicated to the miracle of the manna! (See Likkutei Sichos, vol. 32, p. 147).
It’s true that we place two loaves of challah on our Shabbos table (lechem mishneh) to remember the double portion of manna, but that isn’t a Biblical holiday. Why didn’t the Torah establish a major festival specifically to celebrate the manna? After all, the Torah explicitly commanded Moses to store a jar of manna as a keepsake “for your generations, so they may see the bread that I fed you in the desert.” Why is there no holiday for this incredible event?
Because that is precisely what Sukkos is!
When we leave our sturdy, comfortable homes and step out into the sukkah, we are stepping into the desert experience. The miracle we are reliving in the sukkah is not just that we survived the outdoor elements; it’s that G-d sustained us and kept us alive in a barren wilderness for forty years through the manna and the Well of Miriam.
Sleeping in the desert isn’t a miracle. Whether you want to or not, if you’re tired enough, you fall asleep. But finding food and eating in a dry, desolate desert every day for forty years? That is an absolute, supernatural miracle!
As the Torah emphasizes in Parshas Eikev (Deuteronomy 8:2-3): “And you shall remember the entire path that Hashem your G-d led you these forty years in the wilderness… He afflicted you and let you hunger, and fed you the manna.” (See also the commentaries of Rashbam and Ramban on that verse).
This is why the primary mitzvah of sukkah is performed through eating! By eating inside the sukkah, we directly re-enact and commemorate forty years of divine sustenance in the wilderness. We eat in the sukkah to feel and remember the miracle of “eating in the desert.” That is why eating at least a kezayis of bread on the first night of Sukkos is an absolute obligation—even in the pouring rain—because eating is the very essence of the miracle we are celebrating.
Food: Where Matter Meets Spirit
This brings us back to our starting question: Why are Jews so uniquely fixated on food? Where does this deep religious and cultural drive come from?
It isn’t just Jewish folklore or comedy jokes about overeating. Our entire spiritual tradition revolves around food. We are obligated to eat three full meals on Shabbos, two feast meals on every holiday, a pre-fast meal (seudah mafsekes) before Yom Kippur, and so on. Why?
Because food possesses a unique physical and spiritual property that exists in nothing else in creation—not in money, not in gold, not in clothing.
Food gives life to a human being. Through eating, we see something extraordinary: a physical substance providing life energy to a spiritual soul.
A soul is spiritual, intangible, and transcendent. Yet if a person stops eating, their soul leaves their body. What connects a physical body to a spiritual soul? Food! Food is the exact bridge where physical matter touches spiritual vitality. (As explained in Likkutei Torah, Sheshet Yamim Tochal Matzot, Parshas Tzav, 13a, and numerous other chassidic discourses).
And that is why Jews are so occupied with food. The entire mission of a Jew in this world is to take the physical and make it spiritual—to elevate mundane, material existence into holiness.
Food is our ultimate daily classroom for this mission. It shows us that physical things can sustain and reveal holiness.
We take the skin of an animal, process it, and write letters on it to create the holiest object on earth—a Torah scroll. We take money—the very thing people argue over, steal, and fight for—and by giving tzedakah, we transform it into an act of holiness. With silver and gold, our ancestors built a Sanctuary for G-d.
So when we sit down to eat, food serves as a constant reminder of our entire purpose on earth: to take every physical detail of our lives and elevate it into something holy, meaningful, and divine.
This post is also available in: