Standing up a ladder wielding a hammer by way of preparation for the next fixture in Jewish festival season, the very sombre Day of Atonement seems like a distant memory.

Just five days ago we embraced asceticism for 25 hours, fasting and shunning all other bodily pleasures, even cosmetics and leather shoes. Tonight the holiday begins which more than any other gets us involved in the physical world.

For the seven-day Succot, we need to build a makeshift hut or booth, cover it with leaves or bamboo, and eat all our meals in it. We do this because we are told to in Leviticus (23:42), where it says: “You shall dwell in booths for seven days.”

This is presented as a reminder of our ancestors’ Exodus from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land, or in the words of Leviticus “so that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

This is a source of great amusement to British Jews like myself, who are used to making an assessment before each mealtime, as to whether our hut is too waterlogged for use (you are excused if food would get ruined). The fact that sitting with twelve layers in London hardly resembles sojourning through the wilderness in the Middle East does not go without comment.

But many a religious scholar has written about how leaving our well-built, secure homes, and going out under the elements reminds us about human vulnerability and hammers home the point that, however technologically advanced society has become, we are still reliant on God. And the British rain and wind only really helps to make this case.

The most interesting thing about the festival is how, on the Day of Atonement, we ignore our bodies like they don’t exist – the rabbis even say that we become like angels for a day. But the only way of observing Succot is with your body – simply by moving yourself out of the house and in to this hut, and by eating a meal there, you have met your obligation.

Another command of Succot, again physical in nature, is to take hold of four species each day and recite a blessing. They are the lemon-like Citrus Leviticus, and branches of palm, willow and myrtle. The observance of this law in Jesus’ day may be explain why branches were laid before him in the New Testament account that inspired Palm Sunday.

When I was a child, Succot was one of my favourite festivals. Aside from the “hut parties” and the fact that we kids got to decorate the hut with spray paint, this was because while most of the other people in our community were stuck with accountants or lawyers or doctors for fathers, I was lucky enough to have a cabinet maker father. When the other Succot huts in Manchester blew over, ours always weathered the storm – even in the hurricane of October 1987.

Not everyone greeted my father’s huts with such admiration as his family. When he and my mother moved in to their first home, the neighbours, who had never met Jews before, welcomed them to the area. Asked if they were happy in the house, my parents replied that they were, though they hoped to build an extension.

A few days later, their Succot hut went up. My parents learned, as they were taking it down after the festival that their neighbours had spent the entire festival panicking that this makeshift structure was their idea of an extension