Sukkot is a yom tov when we step outside ourselves. We go from people who are often unsure about how to use a hammer – even to put up a mezuzah - to spiritual Home Depot experts. We extend ourselves beyond our comfort zone, going from secure, solid, and dry homes to temporary, tottering shacks, exposed to the elements. We leave the private and protected space of our synagogues to go into the public square where strangers see our sukkot and wonder about these huts and the people within them.

All this is evident in Jewish neighbourhoods, when many people put their sukkot in their backyards or, occasionally in designated areas usually reserved for parking in apartment complexes. But this week in New York City, the low-tech sukkah has become high design and in-your-face. Sukkah City is an exhibit of twelve architecturally avant-garde sukkot on display in Union Square. Those twelve sukkot were selected in a juried competition from over 600 entries, one of which (a taxi cab sukkah) was submitted by a member of Beth Tzedec and many of which can be viewed on-line at sukkahcity.com. Sukkah City represents a new way to conceptualize an ancient tradition. The idea comes from Reboot, a project to find new ways to express Jewish life, communal culture and personal identity.

The sukkot were in Union Square (where Broadway, Park Avenue and 14th street intersect) through September 20. The winning design -selected by readers of New York magazine - will remain up through October 2. Two of the sukkot are to be on view during Hol Hamo’ed (the weekdays of Sukkot) at the Center for Jewish History in Greenwich Village. (http://www.sukkahcity.com/sukkah/nyc-sukkab.php ).

The SukkahCity web-site explains that the sukkah is an

ephemeral, elemental shelter, erected for one week each fall, in which it is customary to share meals, entertain, sleep, and rejoice. Ostensibly the sukkah's religious function is to commemorate the temporary structures that the Israelites dwelled in during their exodus from Egypt, but it is also about universal ideas of transience and permanence as expressed in architecture. The sukkah is a means of ceremonially practicing homelessness, while at the same time remaining deeply rooted. It calls on us to acknowledge the changing of the seasons, to reconnect with an agricultural past, and to take a moment to dwell on--and dwell in--impermanence.

Many of you know the basic rules and regulations for a sukkah:  it must be “temporary, have at least two and a half walls, be big enough to contain a table, and have a roof made of shade-providing organic materials through which one can see the stars.”

Of course other parameters are developed by my creative and curious rabbinic predecessors. For example:

·         may a Sukkah be built in a tree? Yes.

·         May it be built under a tree branch? No.

·         May it be constructed on a boat or on an open backed wagon or truck? Yes.

·         May a wall be created using a whale? Yes.

·         How about an elephant? Are you ready for the answer?  Yes!

Halakhah provides the design constraints and builders are free to “produce a building that is at once new and old, timely and timeless, mobile and stable, open and enclosed, homey and uncanny, comfortable and critical.”

Writing in New York Magazine, Justin Davidson observes:

The sukkah functions as a concrete, if multivalent, symbol. It can be an expression of empathy with the homeless, such as the one built from …. cardboard signs bought from the indigent. There is a wooden globe … clad in native city grasses … as an urban … nod toward nature and the autumn harvest. …. One entry plays on a childlike desire to duck inside a mini-structure in search of fantasy… It looks like some soft, curvaceous organism that encloses a walk-in pouch saturated with the smell of eucalyptus. The most … intricate...is a multilayered helix, [joining] lengths of wood in a system [that is] extendable. .. [Another one is very simple, using] scrap-wood wedges as a permeable, [curtain].  [Another sukkah balances] poverty and loftiness by hinging together simple sticks in a wild, upswept assemblage that resembles that other great icon of the desert sojourn, a burning bush.

The process and results of the competition, along with construction documentation and critical essays, will be published in a book, Sukkah City: Radically Temporary Architecture for the Next Three Thousand Years. Next year, Sukkah City will expand to locations all around the world. I hope we will construct a partnership between the Koffler Centre, OCAD, The School of Landscape Architecture and Design of the University of Toronto, and many creative Canadian architects, so that we will become part of Sukkah City 2011. We could erect the sukkot in Nathan Phillips Square, named for the first Jewish mayor of Toronto.

I draw a number of insights from Sukkah City.

The many sacrificial offerings designated in the Torah for Sukkot were understood by the rabbinic tradition as being for the nations of world. Torah is not just something for Jews. Torah has something to say to the world.

Just prior to Neilah on Yom Kippur I called upon our congregation to stand up for the Millennium Development Goals. Our fasting and our shofar sound have a message to the world that others live in constant affliction and that we can use our temporary fast to spur governments to address issues of child poverty, illness and education.

The documentary film “100 Voices” had the same message. Jewish music and cantorial interpretation have something precious for non-Jews at the concert hall in Warsaw or the city square in Krakow. 

We need to remind ourselves that here, in Toronto, people live on the street or in temporary shelters all the time. We should stand in public using the teachings of our traditions.  We can move beyond our internal focus to engage the society and the world on important issues based on a strong sense of our own selves, traditions and community.

Sukkah City also serves as a reminder for Jews and others to keep balance in their lives. We need to breathe the air, take time to be outdoors, and restore a connection to land and water.

Sukkot is not just about our own celebration. As Rav Adam Cutler taught yesterday, those of us who have sukkot often invite in only our own friends. We are challenged to find a way to open ourselves to others by welcoming guests who may be from other segments of the Jewish community. We can welcome spiritual ushpizin and people living in our ‘hood.

In the New York Jewish Week, the editor, Gary Rosenblatt wrote:

The blessings in our own lives inspire us to reach out beyond our own needs to attend to those of others, to recognize that our planet’s resources are a gift but not a guarantee, and that we must do all we can, in partnership with our Creator, to preserve, protect and enhance this world we share. On Sukkot we step out of our comfort zone and into the sukkah, reconnecting with ancient traditions and establishing new commitments to sanctify this world and all who inhabit it. As we sit outside in the cool autumn air, may the warmth of the sun and the night time glow of the stars inspire us to reach both heavenward and deep within our hearts.

Whether it is our simple sukkot or the innovative ones of Sukkah City, the vision is the same: to sanctify God and our lives here on earth.

http://nymag.com/arts/architecture/features/68057/

http://www.sukkahcity.com/sukkah/nyc-sukkab.php

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/arts/design/17sukkah.html

http://www.forward.com/articles/131428/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/nyregion/26critic.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

http://www.jidaily.com/pFB/e

http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/46122/rebooth/?utm_source=Tablet+Magazine+List&utm_campaign=5425590d0d-9_29_2010&utm_medium=email