Shaking it Up on Sukkot

One of the special components of Sukkot is the Four Species, Arba Minim, aka lulav and etrog. The Four Species are held together and waved or shaken on each day of Sukkot (except for Shabbat).

Where does this mitzvah come from? How do we know how to perform the mitzvah?

Throughout this activity, you will be building up your knowledge about the Arba Minim. You will need to take notes as you go along. Your notes should include the answers to the questions written in blue.

The story of the Arba Minim begins in the Torah. Read the verse below. What are the Hebrew and English names of the Arba Minim? As you read the verse, think about what you would need to know in order to make sure that you are fulfilling the mitzvah properly. Jot down a list of questions that you have after reading the verse.

Hopefully you thought of lots of questions that you would need to have answered before you could shake your Arba Minim. The rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud had long discussions about this. Later rabbis put the discussions together and clarified the rules (halakhot) in books (codes) that you can find in the Halakhah section in the resource panel.

Open the resource panel by clicking on the text of the Torah verse. Click on “Halakhah”. Some major codes of Jewish law are the Mishneh Torah, Sefer HaChinuch and the Shulchan Arukh.

​​​​​​​Sefaria tip: Texts with a complete English translation are marked EN.

Now that you have gathered information about the Arba Minim, you can share what you know with others.

Make an interactive infographic on Thinglink with the information that you learned about the Arba Minim.

Start with a picture that you have drawn, photographed, or found on the internet.

Add the requirements for each of the arba minim and links to the text in Sefaria.

If you need help with Thinglink, you can watch a tutorial.

As an alternative, you can use Canva to create your infographic. Before you begin, you can browse through some examples of infographics created on Canva.