Instructions: Caryl Ehrlich has vivid memories of the sukkah built by an Orthodox rabbi in the Miami Beach neighborhood where she was a child.

That grid of streets is still lush with green lawns in front of pastel houses; behind them grass-covered alleys wider than trucks. Every Sukkot, the rabbi erected the ceremonial hut in the alley behind his house, diagonally across from the Ehrlich familys back door. In the spirit of the holiday, the rabbi and his wife invited their neighbors to celebrate Sukkot.

We were not a religious family, Ehrlich says, explaining that they hardly saw the rabbi all year. I used to look forward to this festivity every fall; it was my only connection to Judaism.

A Manhattan resident for decades, Ehrlich, who teaches a behavioral approach to weight loss, recalls the palm fronds that created a lacy ceiling and the rabbi filling his small hut with oranges, grapefruits, limes, mangoes, papayas, lemons - and etrogs, the citrus-like fruit that is used to celebrate the holiday. Their varied shapes and colors mesmerized her; tropical perfume filled the air.

The dangling decor wasnt just for show, says Ehrlich, describing large baskets filled with Floridas finest fruit among dishes on the table that the rabbis wife had prepared from the same kind of produce gracing the sukkahs walls.

Her description brought back Sukkot celebrations from my childhood. But since I grew up in the suburbs of New York, I was smelling and tasting entirely different crops: apples and pears, eggplants, peppers, pumpkins and parsnips.

In contrast to our visceral memories, there are people who now decorate sukkah walls with plastic fruit and vegetables, which they recycle and use year after year. A page in a Jewish holiday cookbook I own features a photo touting creative Sukkah decoration in Los Angeles. Its walls are made from bamboo curtains stenciled with bananas, watermelons, oranges and strawberries; its ceiling supports super-sized cardboard pears and twirling mobiles of artificial fruit.

In a world where computer programs compete with real life experiences, is virtual fruit becoming the link to our ancient harvest festival? How did Jews stray so far from our agrarian roots?

Sukkot began as a pilgrimage holiday, a time when our forbears traveled to Jerusalem carrying figs, dates, pomegranates, apricots, squash, oil, barley, wheat bread and wine. After the years final harvest, the Israelites offered thanks for the blessing of fruit and grain and shared the earths bounty with the poor, none of which involved plastic produce or pictures of fruit. Since Sukkot marked the end of the growing season, thousands of people were able to spend a week celebrating and living in harvesters huts, a precursor to the modern sukkah.

Although it takes more time and effort, hanging a farmers market worth of produce on Sukkah walls and incorporating some of the fruits and vegetables into recipes, such as the ones below, is far more rewarding than decorating the easy way, with toy food.

Lemon chicken is a traditional Sukkot dish, probably because the etrog, a lemon flavored, divinely scented citrus the size of a grapefruit, plays a pivotal role in the holidays rituals. The Book of Leviticus says, You shall take for yourselves the product of goodly trees, which rabbis throughout the ages have interpreted as the etrog. Along with the lulav - branches of palm trees, willows of the brook and leafy trees, assumed to be myrtle - the etrog is one of the four species of the earth, which represent all growing things.

In todays push-button world, many of us have lost the connection between farming and the food on our table. Perhaps its because we purchase shrink-wrapped produce, order groceries online or rely on restaurants to deliver dinner. We couch potatoes have become too comfortable to adorn a sukkah with food we cook and eat, to entertain friends outdoors, or simply to commune with nature.

For centuries, people have read, noshed and - on warm afternoons basked in filtered sunshine inside sukkahs - chatted for hours under the stars within their walls. Traditionally these makeshift huts have been a place of hospitality and openness, a place to invite guests for dinner, especially those who do not have a sukkah of their own. Weather permitting, people should enjoy as many meals as possible inside sukkah walls during the eight-day holiday, all of which is more meaningful surrounded by the touch, sight and smell of real food.

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