Did it get colder before Easter? Jewish Huts! It turns out there's a scientific explanation for this phenomenon

Jewish Huts — expect cold weather and rain. Photo: LookByMedia

As soon as the thermometer column crept downwards a couple of days before the Christian holiday, Belarusians remembered the old saying "Jewish Huts" on social media and among themselves. During "Kuchki," it's always cold and it rains — that's what our elders used to say. But what are these "Kuchki"? Where did the word come from?

Nobody really knows, apart from the fact that they are somehow connected with Jewish holidays.

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A Jewish "hut" in a 1699 engraving. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

"Kuchki" is not an abstract term, but a completely material one. In the tradition of Judaism, there is the autumn festival of Sukkot, which, translated from Hebrew, means "booths", "huts". They are erected in memory of the forty-year wandering of the Jewish people in the desert.

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Traditional huts in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Modern huts on the terraces of an apartment building in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The word "kucha" (heap/pile), "kuchka" (small heap/pile or hut) itself has ancient Slavic roots; etymologists trace it to Proto-Slavic *kǫtja (hut, tent, pile) and associate it with *kǫtъ (corner, angle, enclosed space). To this day, a sheepfold with a small shed is called "kucha" in many Belarusian dialects. From the same root comes the Bulgarian къща (house), Church Slavonic кꙋща, from which the Russian куща in the variant name of the Sukkot holiday, праздник кущей (Feast of Tabernacles). Yes, and the famous райские кущи (paradise groves/tabernacles) are not bushes in the Garden of Eden at all, but rather a hut or a shade.

Belarusian, Polish, and Ukrainian languages, from the same Proto-Slavic root, formed another name for the holiday of the Jews who lived alongside them for centuries — Kuchki.

Architecture of Exile

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It is believed that several huts (kuchki) have been preserved on pre-revolutionary houses in the historical center of Brest. However, with the same probability, these could be later attempts to increase living space by adding loggias. Photo: Sb.by

Metropolitan Joseph Siemaszko, describing his trip in 1837, mentions that in a church in Chyhyryn, he saw a fixture for Catholic services on Good Friday. The coffin of Christ, as the doctrinaire Siemaszko indignantly writes, was made "in the likeness of a Jewish hut" and covered with fir branches.

Since building huts from palm branches was problematic in the cold October climate of Eastern Europe, local Jews built very specific "kuchki". These were booths, temporary shelters — such huts made of poles and branches. Over time, they were replaced by glazed balconies or porches, the main feature of which was a hinged or sliding roof.

Religious law required being under the open sky, so local craftsmen made roofs on special blocks and hinges. In such shelters, under the open sky, men had to pray and eat for a whole week.

Unique testimonies of how this process was perceived by their Belarusian neighbors have been preserved in the materials from expeditions to the town of Zhaludok in the Lida region. The local people remembered what this holiday looked like. They told researchers that in autumn, just when it was time to dig potatoes, Jews would begin to build their "little huts" in their yards. Furthermore, the material chosen was not random: grandmothers claimed that they built predominantly from alder. Peasant logic found a practical explanation for this — alder best retained dampness and moisture, which was supposedly required for the ritual.

But the most surprising thing for the Christian eye was something else. According to popular belief, the Jewish holiday required obligatory bad weather and suffering. Therefore, if autumn turned out dry and it didn't rain, the faithful themselves would take buckets and pour water onto the roofs of their huts.

Belarusians knew perfectly well that Jewish law required absolute ritual purity from Christian influences. Therefore, local jokers sometimes intentionally walked past a Jew who was erecting his hut and offered the traditional Christian greeting: "May God help you!" As recalled in Zhaludok, after this, the poor neighbor had to completely dismantle the structure and start all over again, as the work was considered desecrated.

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Wooden hut in Łódź. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Today, in some historical city centers and former Jewish towns, one can find Jewish huts. However, it's not always clear whether it's a hut or a disharmonious structure that appeared during the period of dividing former private homes into communal slum apartments.

Kuchki and Bad Weather

For the Belarusian peasant, their neighbors' masochistic sitting in cold annexes during autumn bad weather seemed like an incomprehensible and even cruel ritual. A stable mythological explanation for this process formed in the popular consciousness.

Ethnographer Michał Fiodorowski recorded an eloquent Belarusian proverb in the village of Kuklichy (then Volkovysk district, now Svislach district — between Porazava and Lyskovo): "If it didn't rain during Kuchki, all the Jews would be scabby."

In traditional Slavic culture, skin diseases — "parsha" (scab) or scabies — were considered a manifestation of ritual impurity and sinfulness. Peasants believed that skin diseases were God's punishment for strangers due to their faith. Therefore, the cold downpour that flooded the annexes during Sukkot was perceived by Christians as a magical and vital means of purification.

Bad weather became an integral, sacred part of the incomprehensible, even mysterious Jewish holiday in the eyes of Belarusians.

Chronological Paradox: If Sukkot is in Autumn, why are Kuchki in Spring?

Here a logical question arises: if Sukkot and the construction of huts take place in autumn, why do we mention them in spring, just before Passover?

Apparently, it's due to the peculiarities of folk memory. By associating the Jewish religious holiday with bad weather, peasants derived a simple rule: when Jews celebrate something important — expect cold weather.

And the most noticeable holiday for those around them was always Passover, which fell in the period after the spring equinox.

In the mythological consciousness, two different phenomena merged into one. Not everywhere, however. Alexander Astravukh's "Yiddish-Belarusian Dictionary", published in 2008, notes that on the border of the Hrodna and Brest regions, "Jewish Huts" (zhydouskiya kuchki) traditionally referred specifically to the rainy autumn period at the end of September, before "Indian summer."

Why "Jewish Huts" are not in dictionaries

Despite the fact that the expression "Jewish Huts" (zhydouskiya kuchki) or simply "Kuchki" is seemingly known to all Belarusians, it is not included in any Belarusian dictionaries. The reason is Soviet censorship: "Kuchki" had a clear religious connotation, and Soviet people were not supposed to know such vocabulary. Moreover, the words "zhyd" (Jew) and "zhydouski" (Jewish), which Belarusians used completely neutrally for centuries, were tabooed and not allowed not only in dictionaries, even dialectal ones, but also in ethnographic publications.

Even Yanka Kupala's poem "Jews" (Zhydy), a manifesto of Belarusian-Jewish solidarity, was banned during Soviet times.

Thus, a paradoxical situation arose where the expression is known to absolutely everyone, but dictionaries do not mention it.

Meteorological Explanation for the Cooling during Passover

Thus, the autumn holiday, when Jews "tormented" themselves by living under the open sky, gave its name to a period of cold, rainy weather in general.

At the same time, people have long noticed that the spring cooling in our latitudes coincides with Jewish Passover.

One possible explanation for this is as follows. Passover always falls on the first full moon after the vernal equinox because the Jewish calendar is based on lunar cycles, and since atmospheric pressure rises during a full moon, cooling with wind, rain, and frosts arrives in our latitudes.

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