Sukkot — which begins Monday evening, Sept. 20 — has long been a favorite holiday at the Altman house in Colorado Springs.
For my husband and me, it is a time when we can stand down from the stress of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services, of which we have been participatory lay leaders for more than 30 years.
We can take a step back from deep soul-searching and self-examination and plunge into more ordinary and mundane activities.
The Jewish people are fortunate that the Torah placed this holiday after Yom Kippur; we really need some joy after G-d has forgiven us for a year of human behavior.
We usually do our first step toward building the sukkah as soon as we arrive home from Yom Kippur services: we take out a box or two that contains our sukkah supplies from the garage.
We have separate boxes for the frame, canvas, lights, s’chach and decorations, as well as the carpet flooring.
One of the more onerous tasks for us is taking them all down from their non-seasonal resting places. When we see a couple of the boxes out on our patio, we know that a joyous season has begun.
Our first sukkah was a labor of love. My husband Gary was out of town at the time, so I put it up with the help of my neighbor. Gary had purchased the materials, plywood and nails before leaving, so we thought it would be an easy buildout.
Not having experience in construction, we didn’t realize how much wood was needed. Gary had bought three pieces of four-foot-wide plywood. The resulting structure was the size of a phone booth (ask your parents what that is if you are under 30).
When we hosted guests, two of us had to sit outside the sukkah and two fit inside, on either side of the corner of our bridge table. Live and learn.
Our next effort toward sukkah improvement was to use PVC pipes and vinyl tarps.
We constructed the frame ourselves, gluing straight joints for the long sides and elbow joints at the ends of the pipes for corners. We tied the tarps onto the pipes with twine, and used wooden lattices to hold up the s’chach.
This construction lasted a number of years, but it was a bit drafty due to the fact that the tarps did not quite meet at the corners. It was also a bit unstable, which resulted in our checking the backyard first thing every morning to see if it was still upright.
We finally found a sukkah that has lasted us for the past 20 years from a ready-made kit manufactured by a company in Brooklyn. (This was before PCs were popular, so we actually used a telephone to order it: 1-800-227-SUKAH.)
The frame of the kit is made of sturdy steel rods, and it has a custom-fitted tent-like canvas covering as the walls.
The canvas stretches all the way around the frame, so we have no more drafts at the corners. The canvas is secured by grommeted flaps at intervals with Velcro fasteners between them.
There is even a window on the back wall.
It also includes mats of bamboo for the roof.
We have exchanged our wooden latticework for dowel rods stretched across perpendicular to each other to hold the bamboo sheets up without sagging. This also gives us excellent places to hang decorations.
When I asked our three daughters for their favorite memories of Sukkot, they all mentioned the bears.
We have pear trees in our back yard, and the bears love to visit each fall to help themselves to the fruit. We used to bring pots and pans into the sukkah and beat them together to discourage meetings with wildlife on our way from the sukkah to our back door.
We even used our groggers from Purim to make bear-resistant noise.
I am happy to report that we never had a direct encounter with a bear during Sukkot; however, there were times, after the dinner was cleared away and the sukkah was quiet and dark, that the bears appeared. I wonder where they waited while we and our guests were outside?
Another memory our girls loved was the fact that we used decorations that they made in Temple Shalom’s preschool. Their job was to hand them up to me, and I would tie them to our dowel rods while perched on a chair.
They chose the placement and type of decoration.
We still use these beloved decorations, although now I have to put them up myself.
We have done our best to make improvements to our sukkah over the years. We have installed a bright outdoor lantern and strings of electric lights instead of low-wattage battery-powered camping lanterns, added an outdoor carpet for warmer and more decorative flooring, used dowel rods to support the s’chach, and tied the corners of the sukkah to our trees for security in the Colorado winds.
For a couple of years, we tried installing a transparent rain fly over the top of the sukkah that was made of plastic taped to a metal frame from a free-standing tent.
This had to be discontinued due to the fact that it was too small to fit comfortably over our entire sukkah and usually left one person open to the elements (most often me).
We also had difficulties pulling it tight enough so that rain ran down the plastic and did not pool inside.
We finally returned it to our good friends who had helped us construct it.
One other Sukkot story:
One year, we and our guests all trooped outside carrying the challah and salad for the first course. It was bitterly cold outside, and the last guest out shut the kitchen door behind her. Unfortunately, the door was on the latch, and when we finished our salad and were ready for the soup, we found we were locked out.
I ran to our neighbors’ house to call my girlfriend, who had an extra key to our house. The neighbors were not at home. I ran across the street to another neighbor’s: no answer.
By the time I returned to the house, very discouraged, Gary and our guests had erected a ladder outside our kitchen window. (Since I was pregnant with our second daughter, I was hot while I was cooking and left the window open.) They cut through the screen above our kitchen sink and sent our friend through the opening.
Thank goodness the soup on the stove had not boiled over!
The Altmans have been out in our sukkah during all kinds of weather. In Colorado, where one never knows what to expect in the fall, we have experienced rain, snow, hail, high winds and mild nights of summer-like weather.
Our daughters reminded me of the times when we were eating in our sukkah with hats, scarves and gloves on, and also of the times in which it was warm enough for short-sleeved shirts, skirts and sandals.
We do our best to have as many meals as possible in the sukkah, and we love to invite guests, although I have learned not to overcrowd us. Once you are seated, it is difficult to extricate yourself.
You may think the mitzvah of erecting a sukkah takes a lot of effort, and you would be right. However, the energy and time expended is well worth it. My husband reminds me of how relaxed and happy everyone is when eating and visiting in our sukkah.
If you have not yet had the pleasure of constructing a sukkah, I encourage you to build one this year. You will build more than a booth; you will build memories. You will not regret it.
I join the IJN and my family in wishing you a Z’man Simchatenu, Season of our Rejoicing.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
