On Saturday, October 6, 1973, at 1:55 p.m., sirens wailed as Israel was attacked while the entire country marked the fast day, and the Yom Kippur War began.
As the High Holy Days gave way to the holiday of Sukkot, with battles raging on the southern and northern fronts, there were serious concerns about the survival of the State of Israel. However, by the end of the holiday the turning point had come, and IDF forces moved from defense to offense.
Brig.-Gen. Mordechai Piron, the chief military rabbi at the time, had issued a statement that “IDF soldiers are exempt from the sukkah commandment” amid war. “Their duty at this time is to completely defeat and destroy the enemy,” he wrote, “and whoever is unable to perform the mitzvah of sitting in the sukkah is exempt from it.”
Nevertheless, many IDF soldiers found ways to commemorate the holiday on the frontlines in the Sinai Desert in the South and on the Golan Heights in the North.
Yom Kippur War and Sukkot
Nathan Fendrich. a 39-year-old Jewish-American on a visit to Israel to document historical and archaeological sites, found himself stuck in Israel when the war broke out, so he traveled between the various fronts, documenting the war with his camera.
Al HaMishmar (“On Guard”) newspaper, founded in 1943, reporting on the battles along the Suez Canal, wrote: “Despite the bitter fighting, there is no forgetting that civilian life goes on. On the frontlines, we discovered an improvised sukkah: a half-track vehicle decorated with branches, completely kosher.”
On October 17, 1973, Maariv reported from deep inside Syrian territory: “On the main road approaching [the former Syrian town of] Hushniya [in the Golan Heights] – in between two damaged tanks – a yellowing thatch blows in the wind covering an improvised sukkah. A soldier from the Combat Engineering Corps tells us: ‘The guys from the armored division set up the sukkah. Yes, they managed to fulfill the mitzvah of sitting in it, before they were called to destroy the last enemy pocket at the Hushniya Junction.’”
An IDF spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post that the IDF will be providing the Four Species to all personnel to celebrate the 2025 Sukkot holiday.