Weekly

Sukkah building, phase III

Dale and I did the framing this morning. (Those of you who frown on Saturday building projects, please avert your eyes.) We are relieved that we bought the kit instead of designing our own. And next year will be faster, because the brackets stay half on. The blackened screw heads are the permanent ones.


The walls are a cross between mesh and a tarp. From the outside it's a little industrial looking, but inside it's great - mostly transparent. They are attached with a simple system of bungee loops.


Kari and Harry and Sam came over with a trunk full of boughs for the roof, and we cut more from the hazelnut tree.


There was much decorating. We hung gourds, fake grapes, dried flowers, bunches of branches, pipe-cleaner spiders, and various other art creations from the kids.


I explained the symbolism of the lulav and etrog, and we all shook it.


We think this is a terrific holiday! We even ate dinner out here. It was chilly, but quite fun. And convenient in its way... no one had to sweep the floor afterwards.

Lulav & etrog

Celebrating Sukkot involves another ritual item besides the sukkah itself, which is the lulav and etrog. An etrog is a citron, sort of like a lemon but not, and a lulav is a braided wand of three branches; you hold them together in a certain way and wave them in the four directions plus up and down, ideally in your sukkah. I thought I’d be able to grab a lulav and etrog at temple this week, but it turns out it’s not so simple; they order them from Israel in advance, and they don’t order any extras. They sent me to the judaica store in the neighborhood. They didn’t have any extras either, and they suggested that I try at Chabad. These are the orthodox Hasids, and I admit to feeling a little bit shy about interacting with them because I don’t know the rules. (Do they expect/require long sleeves, covered hair, a skirt, certain forms of address?) But in my favor, they have a mission: to hasten the arrival of the messianic age by helping non-orthodox jews fulfill the commandments. In other words, they’re all about providing last-minute ritual items to hapless reform jews like me.

Unfortunately, they don’t always answer their phones. So I went to the Chabad house in the U-district, which is right there on frat row, and at least from the outside, blends right in. Two smoking teenage guys, looking like anyone else who lives on that street, were out front and asked if they could help me. I said what I was there for and … they didn’t know what I was talking about. “Is that that shaker thing?” the one guy said. He called inside on his cell phone, said something like “Sobel? We got any of those, you know, lolly eggroll, whatever that is? There’s a lady here looking for one,” and whoever he was talking to said no, they didn’t have any, try Hillel. Hillel is a Jewish university organization, also in the neighborhood. Their building is on the street full of churches and is much more official and snazzy looking. They were busily building their sukkah – this is 2pm on Friday, only a couple hours to go. They were very nice, and they invited me to use their lulav and etrog when I came to visit, but they did not have any for me to take home. They suggested that I try Rabbi Levitin, and looked up his number.

Rabbi Levitin is one of the rabbis for the really orthodox synagogue we see across from the natural foods store in our neighborhood, where the people walk to shul in black suits and wide-brimmed hats, and the prospect of going there made me realize that I really don’t know what’s what with these folks. I assume they have day jobs? Could one of them be my barista and I wouldn’t know? I am so ignorant. I went up to the door of the place and thought, should I even go in? Women don’t enter the sanctuary, if I remember correctly. I tentatively cracked the door and saw that there was not a reception area, just the door to the sanctuary and the stairs going up, which I think is where the ladies go. No one around. No one in the sukkah, all ready to go in the parking lot. I went back to my car and called again. This time, someone answered the phone, and said yes! They do have a lulav and etrog available! And for that I should call Rabbi Kavka directly, at his home, here is the number.
Once again with the answering machine, although the gruff Brooklyn accent almost made it worth it. And what do you know, a little while later Rabbi Kavka called me back! He was very nice and said I should come to his house, which of course is also in my neighborhood (it’s close to the synagogue). We live in the “Jewishly Happening” North End, as my temple likes to say. I go there and there’s other people going in and out buying just what I want. It’s a nice ordinary house. He’s at the dining room table with a selection of citrons and so on for me to choose from. He explains to me which one goes on the left and which on the right, reminds me to hold the etrog with the stem up. (Why? Mindfulness, is my answer.) There are ladies in black busy in the kitchen. He even takes Visa.

So just a couple hours before Sukkot begins, I had my lulav and etrog, and am ready to shake!

Sukkah building, phase II

Regarding Yom Kippur: The combination of fasting with parenting presents a new level of challenge. But we were glad to be able to participate.

In the evening we began phase II of sukkah building, which is to cut the boards to size (note: it might have been better to ask the lumberyard to do the cutting for us) and attach the brackets to the roof beams and corner posts. This is all work we won't have to do again next year. The kids thought this was pretty exciting and enjoyed helping out with the measuring tape, pencil, and bracket placement. They longed to wield the ball peen hammer but we drew the line.

The Sukkah Project instructions are clear and helpful. Still, one part of the assembly we did last night required concentration and attention to detail in order to get multiple brackets oriented correctly, and for those qualities of mind, the night following Yom Kippur is not the best. Not their fault.

Sukkah building, phase I

We decided to celebrate our wonderful home and especially our wonderful backyard by doing something we've never done before: building a sukkah for Sukkot. For those of you not in the know, Sukkot is a fun harvest-themed holiday that comes shortly after the rather serious, introspective (and indoor) High Holidays. You build a simple shelter in your yard and hang out in it as much as you like for one week, ideally picnicking in it at mealtimes and bringing guests. It's very casual. The shelter has to have some kind of walls, but it doesn't have a solid roof; instead, just natural materials like pine boughs or whatever's handy. It should be shady inside, but you should be able to see the stars through the roof. It's supposed to recall the huts that harvest workers threw together so that they could sleep out in the fields, the minimal shelters used by the Israelites during their forty years in the desert, and on a symbolic level, the fragility of all human dwellings. To me a sukkah seems like it would have all the magic of a Christmas tree combined with the thrill of a blanket fort, but even better because it's outside and you eat food in it. What could be better than that? (Note: One is officially excused from the obligation to eat in the sukkah if it's raining, an important rule for Seattle. Even the quantity of rain is specified: if the precipitation is such that it drips in your soup, you may go in.)

There is the matter of actually building this thing. Jewish law invites you to throw together whatever kind of structure you want, as long as you build it yourself and it has that insubstantial roof. My web research turned up various misadventures of city Jews who tried to design their own. At the other end of the spectrum, you can buy a prefab sukkah with faux wood-grain vinyl panel walls for something like $800, which is not our style. We opted instead for a sukkah kit from the Sukkah Project, which sends you the hardware (brackets and screws), a green polypropylene mesh screen for the walls, a lumber shopping list, and supposedly klutz-proof instructions. The testimonials promise that it takes only a couple hours to put together the first time, and half an hour to take apart; the next year, it's much quicker to assemble because you leave many of the brackets on.

While the kids were off with Grandma, we went lumber shopping. First, though, we had to have a way to carry the lumber, because some of the required 2x4s are twelve feet long. (The sukkah will be 8x12 feet.) That meant a trip to REI for a rack for the Camry, which we had sort of been looking for an excuse to buy anyway... there's a canoe in the family, after all. It seems possible to me that building the sukkah will be more straightforward than assembling the car rack. We did manage it, though, and then took ourselves to Dunn Lumber for the boards.

The Sukkah Project instructions do seem very friendly and accessible. However, there were still decisions to make at the lumberyard. SPF lumber, white wood, spruce, cedar? It appears that the first three of those are roughly equivalent choices, all economical and reasonable for our purpose. Then there's the whole straight-boards thing, which a carpentryless girl like me just didn't realize was an issue. We needed seven 2x2s, and spent a while laying them on the floor to find ones that were less warped or twisted. The salesperson helping us was friendly and pleasant, and it's not his fault that 2x4s don't come in 93" lengths on the west coast; you can cut a 96" board to size if it has to be just right, or would 92-5/8" be good enough? Yeesh. We frowned at the design sketches in our instruction book and decided that yes, if they're all 92-5/8", it just means our sukkah will be half an inch less tall, and that's fine. We drove across the street from the store to the main yard, where someone loaded our very long boards onto the car for us. We tied them on with rope we had brought and drove home gingerly. No incidents.

The lumber is in the carport, waiting for Phase 2. (There's a more out-of-the-way place to store it after the holiday.)