Sukkot, festival of temporary construction in Jerusalem

Housing shortage? What housing shortage? Sukkot as a festival is mostly commonly known as that week when Jews suddenly leave the comforts of their homes to eat, play and sometimes even sleep in little shanties they build, temporarily augmenting the amount of "residential space" in Jerusalem. Seemingly every square meter available in the city is taken up by sukkot, as the holiday's namesake huts are known, be they on balconies, rooftops, courtyards, gardens, driveways or smack in the middle of the sidewalk. The Jewish fall harvest holiday is one of the three "pillar" pilgrimage festivals in Judaism mentioned in the Torah, and the huts serve as a reminder of the temporary dwellings used by the Jewish people during their 40-year trek through the wilderness after leaving Egypt.

Traditionally, the sukkah, or tabernacle, must be built of a material that can't be blown down easily and must be covered with living material (usually palm fronds or bamboo sticks) – though not so much so as to block viewing the stars at night from within. But as long as it has three temporary walls and is under 20 cubits (about 35 feet) high, pretty much anything goes. 

 

Tradition states that because one ought to be exceedingly eager to execute commandments, praiseworthy is the Jew who goes about building his sukkah immediately following Yom Kippur. So with the mission of impermanent construction upon us, Jerusalem is ready to get busy with the preparations:

Most Jerusalemites keep it simple, building their sukkot by attaching prefab fabric walls to snap-together metal poles (vendors selling sets can be found all around town), or from planks of wood harvested Lag Ba'omer-style from around the city. But others get more creative, pimping out their tabernacles with windows, paint, using bed sheets or tapestries as walls and sticking the abodes in the strangest of places, like atop cars.

Creative design types have also gotten into the mix lately, submitting outside-the-box ideas for sukkahs for an annual Beit Avi Chai contest, a concept being mirrored in New York this year on a larger scale to much fanfare. To see all the crazy ways a sukkah can be built and still be "kosher," the Neot Kedumim nature park in the Jerusalem foothills has an annual sukkah display with every different type allowed by the Talmud, which set down the original rules, and many that are not – like a double-decker sukkah or a teepee.

Sukkot are not exclusive to Jerusalem's residential quarters either. Because many religious Jews take it upon themselves to only eat meals in the Sukkah over the seven-day holiday, restaurants also get into the mix. Most content themselves with prefab affairs that can seat a patron or two, but others go all out, creating a second dining room inside the hut.

Sukkah builders traditionally also make sure to decorate the sukkah as they would their home, but in this case, the children (literal or inner) get the job, replacing chandeliers with strings of colored lights, Mattise prints with drawings of Jewish holy sites, and hanging colorful chains, fake fruits of the seven species and various other doodads and bric a brac from the "ceiling" for a blinged-out home away from home. Those who also plan on spending a lot of time in their sukkah also bring in the comforts of home, like air conditioners or heaters, beds, couches, computers, TVs, bookshelves and pretty much anything else.

The result of all the construction is a maze of small edifices perched next to, on top of and around pretty much every building in the city, almost a mini city of buildings in every shape and size mimicking the real thing.

Images courtesy of rahel_jaskow, almasudi, elibrody, keshigomu, urish, FeldBum, jaydoubleyougee and benjam1n from Flickr under a Creative Commons license, and by Flash90 for GoJerusalem.com.