Camping on Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkot

So I'm kicking off a short series of posts that are a bit different in the sense that they deals with practical halachic matters. The reason I'm writing these post is that I didn't find a lot of information on the Internet about how to keep shabbat while camping. Add Succot into the mix and you have a considerable Halachik construction problem on your hands. As such, I'd like to contribute my own little experience to this literature.

On a bit of a whim, we decided to do things a bit differently this Sukkot. We spent the couple days in Jerusalem at my inlaws, as usual, but then, rather than heading home to our own sukkah, we decided to spend four nights camping with our four kids in Ein Hemed. This plan for camping left us with a number of practical halachic issues to contend with:

1. Build a sukkah in our campsite
2. Build an Eruv so that we could carry on Shabbat Chol Hamoed within our campsite
3. Build a camp shower to wash in general and especially on Erev Shabbat
4. Prepare shabbat meals
5. Prayer and minyanim

In this series of posts, we'll dive into some of these issues. For now, I'll leave you with the collections of guides to halachic camping that I found online:

• https://www.jewishscouting.org/the-minimalists-guide-to-shabbat-camping/
• https://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/193069/jewish-camping-101
• http://travelingrabbi.com/halacha-general/how-to-build-an-eruv-while-camping/
• http://www.berotbatayin.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ATRBamidbarCamping.pdf