With a tallit draped over his shoulders and a guitar resting on his lap, Rabbi Ethan Franzel sat, eyes closed and completely still, in the dimly lit chapel at Main Line Reform Temple-Beth Elohim in Wynnewood. At 6:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning, darkness still enveloped the sky; the lights in the rest of the building hadn't even been turned on...

In many ways, the sukkah booth that Leslie Sudock puts up every year in a "postage stamp-sized" backyard in Center City has become both an extension of her work as an artist and an expression of her own interpretation of Jewish tradition. Sudock, a 50-something lawyer, musicologist, singer and artisan -- who lives with husband Dan Drecksage near Fitler Square...