Since I talk about the holiday so much and so easily, I thought I should explain what it is. Most New Yorkers, Jewish and non-Jewish have heard of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur but rarely of Sukkot. It’s a holiday that celebrates 2 things and commemorates 1. It’s a fall harvest celebration, it also celebrates the completion of the year of reading the biblical scrolls of the Five Books of Moses, and it commemorates the huts or tents the freed Hebrew slaves built while wandering in the Sinai Desert for 40 years. More explanation…the fall harvest thing is pretty self explanatory so I’m letting it go at that.
Every Saturday (Sabbath) in Temple a specific section of the Five Books of Moses is read to the congregation by the cantor and it is all timed out so the readings end on the Sabbath that falls within the 8 day holiday of Sukkot and start again the Sabbath is right after Sukkot.
It also commemorates the tents the freed Hebrew slaves lived in as they wandered in the desert. Have you seen The Ten Commandments on TV? It’s basically the story of Passover but when Pharaoh lets the slaves leave Egypt it shows them walking through the Sinai Desert towards Israel, and Moses going up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God. On his way down he sees the people gallivanting with the golden calf they made to worship. God was angry at such a sin and punished the people by forbidding the generation that sinned to go into, the Promised Land, the Land of Milk and honey-Israel. Anyone who sinned with the Golden Calf and was between 20-40 years old would not be allowed to enter the Promised Land, so the whole Nation was left to wander the Sinai for 40 years, so the 20 year old’s grew up and died off.
The Sukkah (hut) has many rules and parameters, it has to have 3 walls and a roof but the roof must be of a natural material and you must be able to see the sky (symbolically looking at God). Most people build their Sukkah with 3 walls and use the back wall of their house as the 4th, giving it much stability. Then all meals should be eaten in the structure and many very observant Jews will sleep in theirs. It then gets decorated with all sorts of autumnal fruits and vegetables-real or fake, whatever you want.
Years ago when my husband and I decided to build one I went to the Sukkah Stores (the original pop-up stores, they only exist from August until October) in Borough Park (one of a few Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn) and found them to be $1000 and we weren’t willing to spend that. My mom suggested we build our own frame and then go to a sail maker for fabric walls as many of the Sukkah’s in the Sukkah Store were blue cotton twill. The sail maker wanted $800 and that still was too much. I thought and thought and it finally dawned on me what else is made of blue cotton twill-DENIM!!!!! My husband, my mother and I figured out the architecture and the measurements and then I went to the fabric store and for $100 I bought 12 yards of denim and then got sewing! I made panels to fit inside the frame my husband built and I created a denim Sukkah. To be funny, I bought orange thread and did orange stitching over all the seams like on jeans and decided that my denim Sukkah should be a five pocket one (remember the old Levi’s commercials??). We've had many wonderful evenings in our Sukkah and I look forward each year to inviting people over.
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