Building a sukkah is easier said than done when living in an urban apartment building. When we tired of fashioning one in the kitchen next to a tall window using poles, string, and s’khakh (in this case evergreen branches) we embarked on the adventure of a communal urban sukkah outside our building’s basement. Only a handful of building residents protested, claiming that the sukkah violated the separation of church and state (don’t ask). Most, however, were interested and curious. What has transpired over the years is something we never would have imagined. Next to the bike racks and behind the trash, five diversely Jewish families transformed a concrete slab into a behavioral enactment of sustainability.No matter what kind of sukkah is built, the structure alone enacts a natural order where humans and earth exist in partnership.  The openings in the s’khakh direct our eyes to the sky. The outdoors brushes up against our skin. The fresh air fills our lungs, and the night air chills us. The fruits and vegetables that we hang and for which we give thanks give energy to our physical selves. All remind us of the sacred bond between our planet and our bodies.

City views through the s'khakh

The sukkah provides many opportunities to teach and symbolize our commitments to sustainability. All five families don’t observe similar kashrut or sustainability practices but when share the sukkah we are all green. This year we are making decorations from things we have found in the park– fallen branches, pods, leaves, and nuts – to demonstrate that even city landscapes are a transformation of nature, an idea given to us by Susan Miller, an art teacher at NYC’s Abraham Joshua Heschel School.

The structure of sukkah creates a place of energy where relationships can transport us all to a higher place.  It isn’t easy to co-habitate in a sukkah. The first family to claim a spot at the table  inevitably considers the late arrivals to be intruders, and the later arrivals experience the first families as dominating the space. Yet, when we finally sit down and eat together, we find commonality amid our differences.  When non-Jews come to the sukkah, they feel included and interested in our Jewish life.  The door of the sukkah is always open and so too are our hearts as we welcome not only everyone, but all the aspects of ourselves and each other that closed doors ordinarily enable us to hide. One elderly grandfather, now deceased, hobbled out of his wheelchair, over a step in the concrete, and stood to say Kiddush every year, even though his back was hunched from illness. Maintaining the behavioral discipline and ethical respect that enables five different families to dine and entertain together year after year has brought a shining presence of goodness to our lives.

Finally, our  sukkah creates an environment of hope.  Giving thanks for the harvest prepares people and the earth for the next crop.  Is this not a metaphor for how apprecitive humility creates future justice and deeds of loving kindness? A shared dwelling with an open door incarnates a small scale version of who we can best be as people. Giving thanks through observance signals our belief that such a world is to come, especially if unique families can share a dwelling year after year after year. Such beauty is often brought into the sukkah from the natural world. In the case of our ramshackle urban sukkah, we have to create the beauty from within, and transport it back out into asphalt assault of city life.