Yesterday was the start of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, my wife’s favorite. It’s a harvest holiday in which observant Jews build a temporary hut (sukkah) outside their house and eat meals in it for the ten days of the holiday. It celebrates the harvest while also signifying the impermanence of all things.
Every year since we’ve been together, I’ve built a sukkah in back of our house, and we eat dinner in it each evening of the holiday, weather permitting. We usually have friends and family over for a few of those nights. (Sukkot, the name of the holiday, is the plural form of sukkah.)
We’ve lived in four different places during our 15-year marriage, and although she already had one in the house she lived in when we got married, for the successive three, I’ve custom built new ones. The latest, which I built four years ago, is made of 10-foot sections of 3/4" conduit, held together with neat little clamps from this place: MakerPipe.
As you’ll see from photos I’ll post a little later, we decorate it extensively with string lights.
To my fellow MOTs: do you have a sukkah? Did you used to? Would you like to? Any good sukkah stories?
I have a sukkah. It’s one of those commercial ones made of light aluminum pipes and angle joints that you can screw on and off, with canvas walls. I use it from time to time. But i doubt I’ll get around to it this year. I’m just feeling overwhelmed with cancer and all that. (See the thread about my husband’s illness. My husband is seriously ill )
But a friend invited me to her family’s sukkah, and I’ll probably go. It’s a nice holiday.
Not Jewish, but live near a very Jewish neighborhood (the Mezuzah count on the front doors is over 90% ). I’ll have to look more closely for Sukkahs next time I walk by.
Tangentially related: Many years ago, there was a thread on this board called “How should I light my sukkah?”. As a mod, and unaware of what the word meant, I hurried into the thread, thinking it might be some sort of drug paraphernalia. Nope.
(IIRC, the solution suggested was Christmas-tree lights)
IANAJ, but from what I understand, a tent would be perfectly acceptable, if perhaps a bit impractical, given that you’re going to be eating (and preparing?) family meals in it for over a week.
Technically speaking, no, a tent is not acceptable. There are several requirements to a sukkah, one of which is that the roof (called the s’chach) must be made of material that was once living, and cannot be solid: one must be able to see the stars through it. Some people use tree branches or wooden lattice. Also, one side should be open to the outside.
The idea is not to have a sealed, comfortable enclosure, but to be exposed to the elements.
Here is a daytime view of our sukkah. Nighttime image still to come.
I live in a condo with no balcony, so no sukkah. One of our neighbors has sacrificed his parking space for a communal one for the building; I may stop by.
Palm fronds are considered the best. They sell them here around the holidays.
In recent years this intermittently (at best) observant Jew with no yard and no suitable balcony has gone to the sukkot of local Jews who have such luxury.
Except this year my opportunity to visit my sister and her family (which I’ve been trying to do for over four years - there have been delays) fell right across the High Holidays and Sukkot. HaShem will just have to be understanding that I took an airplane flight on Yom Kippur and visited my sister’s home rather than a temporary dwelling - but since HaShem is all knowing I presume I don’t have to explain myself. I chose living family over ritual.
I’m a novice about a sukkah. Yet I’ve always wondered what the final scene in the movie The Great Dictator was, where Paulette Goddard says something to the effect of “we’re free to live like regular people.” Though I’ve seen the movie a couple times, the context finally clicked.
We live on the North Shore of Boston, our house backs right onto the sea, and our view looking out is of Swampscott, Marblehead, and the Atlantic. This is what we see from the sukkah. The rainbows aren’t there all the time. (Click to see the whole image.)
I’ve never put up a sukkah, but at our previous home the downstairs neighbors always put one up on the deck I built in the back yard. We loved seeing it set up and even spent some time out there with them in the evenings. I have some photos of my family in our next door neighbor’s sukkah when I was a wee lad, but I don’t recall us ever building one.
A friend who used to live in Florida collected palm friends left when the city pruned the trees. But here in the American North East, palm is not an option. Most people use a loosely woven bamboo mat (which can be reused every year.) When i set up my sukkah, i prune my oak trees and sometimes the yew, and use those branches.
). I’ll have to look more closely for Sukkahs next time I walk by.
