When we were young, the night would come and we would make our way out into the sukkah. It was a small wooden hut of sorts, with schach on the roof – branches from the nearby creak behind the shul in Kitchener, Ont.

There was never enough space, but somehow our kleine sukkah (like the lyrics in the classic Yiddish song Hasukkah hakleine) would seem to enlarge: the walls would stretch, and once we all sat down, there was enough room for the seven of us and guests.

Overhead, bees would buzz, looking for their treasure, their candy that Edmond looked for in Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Some of us would be scared at the possibility of the impending bites, but they never came.

 We would welcome the ushpizin, the guests – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – into the sukkah and shake the lulav and etrog – up, down, sideways, and smell the Jewish citron, always being careful never to break off the pitom, the stem. If we did, the consequences were grave – money thrown away. The fruit had become unfit to use.

You could imagine the guilt, but when I was a boy, the Huck Finn in me quietly planned to break off the pitom, just to upset the adults. But my thoughts remained a plan. I never went through with it – too scared.

 I never slept in the sukkah, but many do. What an amazing ritual. It calls upon us to act as the Jews did in the dessert: to sleep under the stars, no matter how cold the fall winds and the floor of the booth are.

 People eat and some sleep in the sukkah. Consider what it must have been like for the Jews who had left Egypt; consider what it was like last summer when you camped out in Algonquin Park. Piece the two together, and there you have the laws of conducting one’s life in a sukkah. It is a Jewish law, and it seems natural and peaceful.

 How often do we do such a thing? Not normally. Jewish practice generally takes us inside, protected from the elements. Our rituals are, more often than not, safe and not terribly earthy. It was these types of things, however, that I frequently craved when I was more observant, something that felt more real and less embedded in measurement and debate.

The law says to begin building your sukkah right after Yom Kipper. Few Jews do this, but those who undertake this mitzvah should know that they provide us with much pleasure. Drive through the streets off Bathurst Street and in other Jewish areas north of Steeles Avenue and south of Bloor Street; take a sukkah tour and behold the effort families put into the creation of their wooden booth.

Some are simple, as if a peasant were sleeping inside, as if the austere Shona people of rural Zimbabwe were inside.

Others are majestic, long and wide, with decorations of fruit, cards and poems adorning their walls. When we were children, our sukkah was like that. We competed to see who could decorate one of the walls more beautifully than the others. The wood was old and had a frame attached to it, and my parents always made it seem as though the material had come from a faraway land. Sukkot and the sukkah were magical.

 If you have never built a sukkah, consider it. It is your chance as a Jew, perhaps your only chance, to actualize your desire to be a builder, to be a dessert dweller, to lie awake with your loved ones, staring at the stars through the branches above, to be a Jew in the desert, in Toronto.

 Happy Sukkot, chag samayach.