The Sukka Kit

Sukkot (spelled several ways) is the Feast of Tabernacles. When the fast ends, sundown on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the man of the house is supposed to go out and put up at least one stick of the family sukka, or booth. This is to commemorate the Hebrew agrarian past in which my ancestors lived in the fields in these quasi-shelters during the time of harvest.

I have clients, much more religious than I, who shut down their businesses and go live in the sukka for eight days. I'm not so serious about it. I put up the sukka a couple of days after the Day of Atonement, usually on a weekend. Over the eight days of the Feast, our family will usually eat dinner in the sukka two or three times.

When the kids were little, we would have several of their little friends over to help decorate it. As a result, we have a lot of decorations all ready-made, so all we have to do is hang them up. Also we bought corn bought for the roof, which is supposed to be, by law, open to the sky. Traditionally sukkas are decorated with vegetable matter - colorful gourds, pumpkins, flowers, etc. But we use cut-out animal figures and letters that the kids could paint. We spell out "WELCOME" and "HAPPY SUKKOT" with the fancy painted wooden letters.

We were introduced to the sukka kit by the clergy at the synagogue we were attending at the time. The kit consists of eight cinderblocks and sixteen two-by-three-by-eight foot pine strapping. Two cinderblocks on each corner make the base. Four pieces of strapping are used for the legs. Four pieces of strapping connect the four legs. Four more pieces connect the four legs again for stability. The last four pieces comprise the rafters. Vary as needed to accomodate different conditions of terrain or lack of any of the pieces.

We store the cinder blocks all year in a corner of the yard. The wood I keep in our condominium storage area in the basement. The biggest part of the job is getting the wood out of there!

Happy Sukkot!