Finding Perfection: Sukkah hopping around NY

Sukkot, which occurs each fall, is a week when traditionally, Jews eat (and live!) in the out of doors. In Israel the air is crisp and the fruit harvest is coming to an end. In New York, it’s cold, usually rainy and the wind nips at you. Luckily we have space heaters and layers and warm soup.

This “nature” experience is tempered, of course, by the lovely huts (called sukkot) we build to recall ananei cavod, the clouds of Glory, which were a sign that God was following us in the desert during the Exodus from Egypt. In the past I have spent my sukkot in two or three different structures and usually enjoy them, a bit.

This year, I had meals in 7 different sukkot, each of them unique. I was hoping to come up with a rating system, but each one felt so special that only the few words of Torah given Saturday morning suffice. A rabbi asks, “How many walls are mandatory in a sukkah?” the answer is “two and some” or two and “ehh” as I shouted out. “Why?” the Rabbi asks. Dead Silence. “Because when you put your arm around someone to hug them, your arm makes an angle and you’ve got two and an ‘eh’ angles. God hugs us when we are inside the sukkah.

Thanks God. I thought I liked being in your glory, but I’m sure I like being in your arms. I tend to find personifying God distasteful, but if You want me to build a structure to symbolize a hug, then I’m happy to sit inside of it and feel loved. If I were waxing poetic I might even call the image beautiful. While some buildings had just the required walls and others had four, mostly it was the company in them that made me feel full on embraced.

Anyway, I resort to the questions children ask on Passover –How is this year different from all others? I usually say almost all my blessings in a synagogue sukkah. Not this year. Though having one meal in the smaller of two sukkot at a local synagogue found us the only guests there – which made the one synagogue sukkah experience I had seem just like it was in my own backyard! But of course, my parents’ backyard is already filled with a sukkah, and I spent Monday night out at their house and in their hut with them. Mom made chicken soup per my request with WHOLE WHEAT matzoh balls and some of the best roasted chicken I’ve encountered. It was a joy to see my parents and to join them in their sukkah – to bench lulav with my dad and take the etrog from my great grandparents etrog box. The etrog is too big now. We get better produce than 80 years ago it seems… even in the business of the etrog! My parents and I took some time for Torah too. Rambam and the beleaguered, orphans and widows and that even when times are tough, we are fortunate to have a home to go to and a hut to eat in! Also cute, the following night when my parents had a synagogue board meeting, they loaned it out to our neighbors. So friendly!

Friends (new and old): Two UWSers hosted holiday meals in their personal sukkot … despite impending rain on both meals, they were LOVELY. One had a fish pond right beside the sukkah. Talk about a glorious connection to nature! The other I returned to during the week for s’mores in the sukkah. A firepit right outside of the sukkah kept us all happy and warm… and the beer and marshmallows did a good job too! Those were moving moments. There is something especially tremendous sitting amongst so many friends in a family feeling, small intimate sukkah built by hand.

So, given that I get so excited about these more intimate experiences, what should have been the farthest from my personal sukkah, one at the Jewish Theological Seminary, is actually the nearest to my heart. Not only because I am an alumna and it was a home to many college meals, but also because of the little plaque very few people probably notice. The sukkah is endowed by my darling ‘family’ Frances and Buddy Brandt. Their granddaughter is like a sister to me (having been my roommate for three years) and the sukkah is in the memory of her brother Oren. This was my most recent sukkah experience and to participate in something l’zecher Oren (in the memory of Oren) added so much more meaning to what has become a pretty common experience. I say these blessings in Oren's memory because he liked to build so much everyone thought he'd become an architect. Also, Oren definitely had the type of relationship with God where they were in a strong embrace. Always. So I sat last night hugging Oren’s memory, and also hugging his sister and his grandparents. I hope we were being hugged by God as well. Because in those moments is where God should be. And I returned today to bless some more. The beauty of a sukkah is often times in the people you share it with. Tonight I’m off to a celebration of volunteers for Limmud NY. And then, outside of the sukkah I will go celebrate another wonderful soul who is headed to Thailand to work on human rights and change the world for the better.

I live a blessed life… and this holiday season has reminded me of that tenfold.