Memorable Sukkah Moments

This year’s Sukkos is bound to be like no other in our memory. Thinking it would be fun to take a sentimental journey to “Sukkos past,” I polled some connections here in Baltimore and around the world asking them to share their warmest, fondest, cutest, funniest, and scariest sukkah memories.

Uninvited Guests

“We were in our beautiful sukkah one Yom Tov night in Toronto,” recalls Ester Zirkind. “Someone had told a funny story and I threw my head back in laughter, only to discover two black beady eyes, surrounded by yellow, staring down at me through the schach. A raccoon had decided to join the festivities, perched on one of the beams. I screamed. We scrambled. The sukkah emptied. One of my sons had the presence of mind to run to the bedroom window nearest the sukkah and shoo it away. It left peaceably, but it sure makes a good Sukkos tale!”

Another frightening animal experience was had by Dena Estrin. “When I came back from Israel, I was surprised and disappointed that no one slept in the sukkah as I was used to in Eretz Yisrael. I guess some remnants of my feminist past emerged combined with new baalas teshuva zeal. I pulled a cot out to the sukkah at my rav and rebbetzin’s house and was quite pleased with myself, until a guest arrived in the form of a wobbling, snooping skunk. Off I was into the house for the rest of Sukkos.”

Bonnie Blas Kashnow recounts a tale of another type of uninvited guest. “We were living on Clarks Lane next to Rabbi Taub’s shul. We had company and were going up and down three flights of stairs to bring the food. When upstairs, I was looking out my window. It was a difficult year. Many sukkahs were slashed during the chag. At one point, I came down and said, ‘Something doesn’t feel right; something is missing.’ Then I realized the brisket in its white CorningWare dish, hotter than hot, was gone. A corkscrew and bottle of wine also vanished. I freaked out. Everyone was really scared. How did someone come and go without being seen? It was done so fast. Were we being watched? I guess my mother had good reason to teach me to always make extra…just in case.”

Home Sweet Sukkah

Chana from Bnei Brak shares, “Forty years ago, nobody in Bnei Brak used paper goods (chad pa’ami). My parents used a basket that was tied to a rope and sent carefully down from our house on the second floor to the backyard of the building. The basket went back and forth, or rather, up and down, carrying real china dishes and food for a family with six or seven children.”

“I grew up in North West London during the sixties,” shared one anonymous interviewee, the daughter of a well-known British-Israeli scientist. “The weather was usually cold and rainy, and most people’s sukkahs were uncomfortable to sit in and became drenched and unusable quite quickly. My father, Professor Cyril (Yechiel) Domb, z”l, was very attached to the mitzva of sukkah and was determined to fulfill it b’hidur. He purchased a garden shed, and with the help of a cousin who was an engineer, he worked out a pulley system to raise and lower the roof on top of the schach if it started to rain. This was also permissible on Shabbos and Yom Tov. This is very common now, but I don’t think anyone else in our neighborhood had such a thing. In addition, he bought small convector heaters that were safe to be left on all day and night. The sukkah was soon warmer and cozier than the house. My father moved a folding bed into the sukkah every night and slept there, making sure, of course, that the lights were connected to the Shabbos clock. His greatest nachas was when guests would arrive and say, ‘It’s so warm here, I have to take off my coat.’”

Yoel Berman, who now lives in Israel, remembers this story, which took place when he was a bachur in his hometown of Los Angeles. “My father would basically ‘move’ to the sukkah in the backyard of our private house for the duration of Sukkos. One time the cops came to our address in response to a skirmish between neighbors in an apartment building. They got the wrong address; it was the same street house number, but we were 425 north, and the building they were looking for was several blocks down, at 425 south. As ours was obviously a one-family dwelling, they asked if we were sure there was no other unit someone lives in on the property; from what they knew, they did get a call for this address. We answered that there sort of is another unit that someone does live in now, but we didn’t think that was what they were looking for.”

Sometimes, when you are on the road over Chol Hamoed, your car must become your Sukkos home, as Baltimorean Miriam Sidell relates about her trip to Sandy Point State Park. “We built a sukkah using the car doors according to Rav Heinemann’s instructions. We brought along a small children’s chair and took turns eating our sandwiches in the ‘sukkah.’ Another Chol Hamoed we were in Washington, DC, and we saw someone building a sukkah on the National Mall. We went closer to find it was Rabbi Levi Shemtov putting up a sukkah. They gave out free food, and many Jewish government workers were there assisting people to bentch lulav and esrog.”

A Communal Experience

Baltimorean Shoshana Kruger grew up in the East New York section of Brooklyn, where everyone lived in apartment buildings without porches. “The frum families ate in a communal sukkah at the shul where we davened,” reminisces Shoshana. “My fondest memories of Sukkos are the Shabbos meals we spent with three other families. Each family was responsible for a different part of the meal. My family made the cholent and kishka! We couldn’t wait for davening to be over because the shul smelled so good! The men ate in the sukkah Friday night, but entire families joined Shabbos day. Since there was no eruv, everything was prepared on erev Shabbos. My mother packed the pot of cholent and other items, and my father, my brother, and I walked it (no car) in a stroller (then called a carriage) to the shul. I’m smiling now as I recall the great times we had together. Beautiful zemiros, delicious food, and we children running around the bimah.”

Forecasted Memories

When Hanna Geshelin was living in Boston years ago, before moving to Israel, there was a hurricane on erev Sukkos and many sukkahs were blown down. “My landlord called and told me to move the car from the street to the driveway so it would hopefully be protected. I was detained a bit and didn’t get to do it right away. I will never forget standing on the step in the rain and wind, watching the tree fall exactly where I had planned to put the car. Had I been three minutes faster, the car would have been destroyed and I could have been killed. It truly was miraculous!”

Cressel Miriam Fletcher shared, “We lived in the UK until 19 years ago, when we exchanged heaters and tarpaulins for fans and sun protection. Yet we still quote to each other when the rain starts, as it usually does at least once, even in Eretz Yisrael, “If Daddy says it isn’t raining, it isn’t raining.” It was the caption of a cartoon printed in the otherwise undistinguished local Jewish newspaper in our home town.”

Miri shares, “My paternal grandparents have been coming for Sukkos and Pesach to my parents’ house every year ever since I can remember. For whatever reason, they do not eat in the sukkah on Shemini Atzeres. Since my father does, my grandparents would end up eating in the sukkah on Shemini Atzeres despite it not being their personal practice. One Sukkos, there was a very strong wind, and one of the bamboo mats that made the schach blew aside, leaving my father in a kosher sukkah and my grandfather outside the kosher portion, which he didn’t hold of using anyway!”

Over-the-Green Line Adventures

Baltimorean Judy Landman recalls an incident when she was in seminary 28 years ago: “My friend and I – neither of us had been to Israel and were really new to the country – needed a place for the second day of Sukkos. My friend contacted her American cousin, who lived in a caravan in what was then a fledgling outpost kind of thing called Michmash. I think today it is a bustling yishuv/city. It was over the forbidden Green Line, but we had nowhere else to go! It was quite the adventure for us two young seminary girls. It was a stunning drive in the Judaean hills, where you really felt the Avos. As each stop dropped off or picked up soldiers at their posts, we were getting farther and farther away from civilization. It was so quiet, so beautiful, so intensely Eretz Yisrael. We arrived at friend’s cousin’s home, and her brother also joined as he was in yeshiva and needed that second day meal. It was actually funny for us two Bais Yaakov girls to be eating with a bachur out in the middle of nowhere.”

Sugar-Frosted Memories

One Shabbos Chol Hamoed, over 20 years ago, a longtime friend of mine was sitting in her sukkah in Israel with her newborn son, who was born the second night of Sukkos during a three-day Yom Tov. This is her recollection, to which she adds a disclaimer that anyone who finds herself in her position should ask her own shailah.

“Although I was having many Braxton-Hicks contractions for the past month, I decided I was not having my baby on Yom Tov and would not time them. Nonetheless, right after hadlakos neiros, I had to take a taxi to the hospital! I had heard that you can take a taxi home from the hospital; there was no need to wait until after the last day of a three-day Yom Tov. So about 12 hours after giving birth erev Shabbos, I was home in time for breakfast! On Shabbos morning, a cousin of my mother-in-law, whom I had spoken to on erev Yom Tov, walked over to see how we were. Boy, was she surprised to see me there!”

Sukkos, 1991, is a favorite memory of Chaim and Toby Pollack and family. “My son Ari called me Chol Hamoed morning from shul to ask if he could bring someone home for breakfast in the sukkah,” recalls Toby. “‘Of course,’ I answered. I went outside and put out some paper bowls, plastic spoons, and a box of sugar-filled cereal (healthy eating hadn’t started yet). When I heard them in the sukkah, I went out in my housecoat and tichel to bring the milk. Sitting at the table was Shlomo Carlebach who had been in Baltimore the night before for a concert.”

Sidebar

Hope You Don’t Mind

by Tzvia Ehrlich-Klein

This story happened in Israel. Perhaps it could happen anywhere, but I kind of doubt it....

My friend Shira’s oldest daughter got married several years ago. Two years later Rita, her daughter, gave birth during Chol Hamoed Sukkot. It was a hard delivery, which lasted for two days. Rita’s husband Nechemia stayed with her at the hospital almost all of the time.

Being Sukkot, of course he wanted to eat all his meals and snacks in a sukkah. And, of course, being Israel, hospitals have sukkahs on their premises (as do restaurants, most major municipal parks, and sundry other places). Nechemia had just washed for hamotzi, the blessing over bread. As he was walking towards the door leading to the hospital’s sukkah, a religious-looking man came up to him. In a quiet voice, this man whispered, “I’m not sure, but it is possible that there might be a shailah regarding the schach of the hospital’s sukkah.”

This man didn’t realize that Rita’s husband couldn’t ask for details, since he had already washed but had not yet made the blessing over the bread. So...what could Nechemia do? There was only one option.

Nechamia left the hospital without speaking: walked out of the door and across the street. Stopping at the first sukkah he came to, Rita’s husband opened the door, walked in, sat down, and made the blessings. (People in Israel often erect their sukkahs on the sidewalk, directly in front of their apartment buildings, when they don’t have private sukkah porches.)

Just as Nechemia was taking a second bite of his bread, the sukkah’s door opened again. This time, in walked the owner, carrying his own food.

“Chag Sameach. Welcome,” was all the man said, as he arranged his own dishes around those of his uninvited “guest,” and smiled at the stranger sitting in his sukkah.  

Only in Israel. Nachon?

Tzvia Ehrlich-Klein made aliya in 1971, and lives in Jerusalem. She is the author of many books, available in bookstores, online, and directly from the publishes. This story is reprinted with permission from On Bus Drivers, Dreidels, and Orange Juice (Feldheim).