So you didn’t build a sukkah this year.
Me neither.
I mean, for me, there’s still time – I’m writing this a full week out from the first night of Sukkot. But I’m also writing this while bouncing on a yoga ball, eating dates and drinking special tea, hoping and praying that Hashem sees fit to have our baby come sooner rather than later.
Somewhere, someone is reading this thinking, “b’sha-ah tova,” all in good time, Bridey, don’t rush it. That same person is likely also thinking of the Kohelet, the poem from Ecclesiastes 3 traditionally read during Sukkot:
“A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven.”
Naturally, a time to be born is the first thing on the list.
But however the kugel crumbles in the coming days, it’s hard to imagine that I will have built a sukkah by the time these words are published. But Sukkot is still my favorite holiday, and I want to share just a few of the ways I plan to help my family mark this beautiful time of year – even without a sukkah in the yard.
Build a Tabletop Sukkah
The advent of the internet age means that there are never fewer than a dozen cardboard boxes in the house at any given time. Grab your box-cutter and slice off the top and one side, set it on its bottom and send the kids out to collect branches from the yard. This schach should be just big enough to reach across the top of the sides of the box, creating the requisite roof of branches. Your kids will love decorating the sides with stickers or drawings of fruit and veggies, and setting up their dolls and stuffed animals to enjoy a Sukkot meal in their tabletop sukkah.
Older kids might enjoy doing just this same thing but with Legos, branches and twine, or – of course – pretzels and icing.
Forage a local lulav and etrog
Rabbi Mani in Midrash Rabbah 30 likened the four species of sukkot to different parts of the body: the citron, or etrog, is the heart; the palm frond is the spine; the myrtle resembles the eye; and the willow resembles the mouth. In shaking the lulav in every direction, it is as if, in Psalm 35, we are proclaiming Hashem’s greatness “with all my limbs.”
The four species are all native to Eretz Yisrael, but as people of the land, who is to say we cannot find such symbols in our own backyards, our parks, and around our neighborhoods? Forage your family’s own “four species” to capture the spirit of the lulav and etrog. Does a freshly apple not resemble a heart? The storm-thrown branch of an oak measure the length of the spine?
Help others fulfill the mitzvah of Hachnasat Orchim
I have used these pages to encourage families to “welcome the stranger” and invite not just close friends into our home, but those who are brand new to our community. I’m not brand-new – far from it – but my family has received more than one invitation to join people we don’t know well for a meal in their sukkah. How better to teach my children the value of hospitality than to accept and appreciate that which is extended by others?
Finally – In praise of the synagogue Sukkot
We live in a uniquely porous Jewish community in which members and non-members of congregations are really and truly welcome anywhere in town. It’s the perfect city to celebrate Chag ha-Asif, the Festival of Ingathering. I plan to join the gathering of our local Jews – right into the sukkot of synagogues across the city. Each congregation hosts its own offering of brown bag lunches and community dinners in the sukkah. What a wonderful way to meet friends to celebrate being together.
This is a pretty wild moment for my own family, and I’m not apologizing for failing to fulfill this season’s construction-heavy mitzvah. Rather than gathering friends, family, strangers, and beloved ancestors into my own sukkah, we the Stanglers will allow ourselves to be among those gathered. The sukkat shlomecha, our shelter of peace, will be found out of the home and among our community this year.
