{"id":45326,"date":"2024-10-25T01:36:23","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T08:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=45326"},"modified":"2024-10-24T15:02:48","modified_gmt":"2024-10-24T22:02:48","slug":"our-family-sukkah-traditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2024\/10\/25\/our-family-sukkah-traditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Our family sukkah traditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I look at all the fancy sukkah kits people use when I cruise Instagram. I wonder how fast the structures go up, and whether they stand up to strong winds, but we\u2019ve never spent the money on one to find out. Our sukkah is different. It takes a lot of work to put up and take down, but it\u2019s sturdy and has a history.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our sukkah was created by my dad in the 1960s for my parents\u2019 congregation at the time, in Ann Arbor, Mich. My dad, an engineer, drew up his blueprint, signing it the \u201cDexter Sukkah Company\u201d because they lived in Dexter, Mich., at the time. While my parents helped build sukkot at our congregation in Virginia where I grew up, and I helped decorate them, we never had one at home. I only learned about the \u201cDexter Portable Sukkah\u201d as an adult.<\/p>\n

As newlyweds, we told my parents that we might build our own sukkah. We lived several hours away from them, in North Carolina. My dad brought us copies of his plan. I think he may even have brought down some scrap lumber for us to assemble our own. That first year, we did it. My brand-new spouse and I harvested bamboo from an overgrown lot across the street for the schach<\/i> (greenery put on top) and got started building. My beloved then dropped a piece of lumber on my head. The next day, my grad school advisor suggested I visit the student healthcare centre. A doctor concluded that I probably got a concussion. Although I am handy with a drill, that was the first and last year I built the sukkah with my husband!<\/p>\n

Over time, we\u2019ve moved for our academic lives and careers. The lumber got left behind in North Carolina. The year we lived in Buffalo, NY, while my husband did a postdoc, I taught at a community college, and we didn\u2019t build a sukkah.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the next stop, in Kentucky, we put the sukkah up in a grassy side yard our first year. My husband was a new assistant professor. We invited all his work colleagues to a big party. It took time for us to \u201cget wise\u201d to the antisemitism issues of our college town. We kept putting up our sukkah each year, but moved it to the fenced and gated backyard, where it was private. The schach in Kentucky mostly smelled stinky, as we cut back endless tree-of-heaven saplings from our overgrown backyard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fall evenings in Kentucky were warm, so we would have dinner parties in the sukkah, complete with bug spray. Friends and colleagues would comment about the runner beans and flowers we\u2019d planted in the yard, while our bird dogs wrestled and chased crickets. Sukkot became a favourite holiday to be outside, sharing harvest food and hanging out with friends. We stayed in Kentucky six years. By the end, my husband\u2019s enthusiastic use of deck screws meant that our sukkah lumber was splintered. We abandoned it when we moved to Winnipeg.<\/p>\n

Building a sukkah in Winnipeg, 15 years ago, we started from scratch, using the Dexter Sukkah Company\u2019s blueprint, and bought new lumber, too. That piece of paper with the sukkah plans took up residence in our cordless drill case. No matter what we fix, we see my dad\u2019s plans. A friend from synagogue biked over to help that first year, with his drill gun tucked into the small of his back the way some people carry firearms. This time, my husband used an IKEA-type interlocking fastener approach to frame the walls, where it takes longer to assemble and disassemble the pieces, but the wood remains in better shape. He used mostly oak, elm and crabapple branches as schach at our first Winnipeg house. That year, we continued with the dinner parties, including wine and cheese, with new professor friends. The small crabapple fruits added some additional colour overhead, and some additional excitement when one landed in a wineglass.<\/p>\n

As time passed, our sukkah became decorated with preschool fruit stuffies and paper chains, filled with twins who squeaked with enthusiasm from high chairs. Eventually, they were grade-school kids who set the table and cleared afterwards, in hopes of getting dessert faster.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In our new home (still in Winnipeg), this is the second year we\u2019ve managed to build a sukkah. The schach comes from Virginia creeper vines and Manitoba maple shoots. The kids are big enough to hold up the sides while my husband screws it together. I worry about whether somebody will get hit on the head again. For the holiday, I bake lots of food in advance to feed hungry teens \u2013 fresh air seems to make them eat even more! We sometimes invite over other families. Sometimes, we just celebrate on our own. We hope it won\u2019t rain too hard or snow \u2013 because we\u2019re not diehards. If it\u2019s a cold rain, we\u2019re celebrating indoors at the dining room table instead!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We reuse our decorations, including the stuffies and the plastic wine goblets, every year. This is a holiday that is not expensive for us. We\u2019ve never upgraded to a fancier kit sukkah, fairy lights or pricey ushipizin<\/i> (guest) artwork, and that\u2019s OK. This year, in a holiday season when, to be honest, everything has felt pretty hard to get through, I was heartened to see the sukkah rise again in our backyard, from 2×4 lumber, cut long ago.<\/p>\n

Some years, my holidays are enriched by study. Yes, I loved studying the talmudic tractate describing the rules around building a sukkah, which can seem ridiculous. You can use the side of an elephant as part of your sukkah! That\u2019s legal, according to the rabbis, but also entirely unnecessary. It\u2019s also fine to build your sukkah out of scrap lumber and paper chains.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This year, my husband spent a full day of a long weekend erecting our old-fashioned sukkah. Looking exhausted, his face red from wind, he smiled when he remarked that we\u2019d been doing this now for 26 years. He continued with \u201cevery year\u2019s sukkah is a little different, but every year\u2019s design is the same, too.\u201d There\u2019s nothing wrong with that! In a time with so much upheaval, family traditions like these \u2013 even if they are clunky, heavy and time-consuming \u2013 are well-worth keeping.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Joanne Seiff<\/b> has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including F<\/i>rom the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner<\/a> or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I look at all the fancy sukkah kits people use when I cruise Instagram. I wonder how fast the structures go up, and whether they stand up to strong winds, but we\u2019ve never spent the money on one to find out. Our sukkah is different. It takes a lot of work to put up and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[23602,1802,218,2171,2169],"class_list":["post-45326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-op-ed","tag-family-traditions","tag-high-holidays","tag-judaism","tag-sukkah","tag-sukkot"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}