Sukkahville 2014 ~ 5775

Good afternoon. Welcome to Sukkahville. Our thanks to Kehillah Residential Program, which gave this sukkah design competition a home and a mission—to make people more aware about the need for affordable housing and sustainable development.

We thank Nancy Singer, the Board and staff of Kehillah, our volunteers and sponsors who enabled Sukkahville to go forward. We are grateful to our distinguished panel of judges, to all the contestants who submitted designs, and of course, our top candidates, all of whom have shown amazing and awesome creativity. Clearly these are not your Bubbie’s sukkot.

On Sukkot, Jews go beyond their comfort zone, from secure and dry residences to temporary, tottering shacks, exposed to the elements. We leave the private and protected space of our homes to go into the public square where strangers see our sukkot and wonder about these huts and the people within them.

Today, in Toronto, the low-tech back-yard sukkah has become high design and in-your-face. Sukkahville has arrived in Nathan Phillips Square, named for the first Jewish mayor of this city!!!

All Jewish holidays have one core mitzvah. What is the essential symbol-mitzvah of Rosh Hashanah? Shofar. What is the essential symbol-mitzvah of Pesaẖ? Matzah. What is essential symbol-mitzvah of H̱anukkah? Menorah-ẖanukkiyah. And what is essential symbol-mitzvah for Sukkot? Trick question. There are two: Lulav-etrog and Sukkah.

Sukkot has two mitzvot for two vectors: the universal, noted by dwelling in the sukkah, and the lulav and etrog, a particular covenantal commandment. In Sukkahville, we see a social message about affordable and sustainable housing. Sukkahville states to our city and society that Jews are engaged in our special covenant AND are linked to the needs and concerns of others around us. It sends a message to Jews to be intensively Jewish and deeply involved in the world.

On one level, 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. Thus the sukkah is a stable yet multivalent symbol that serves as an expression of empathy with the homeless, offers a reminder of harvest and evokes a memory of the wilderness sojourn.

Many of you know the basic rules and regulations for a sukkah. Here they are, composed by Rabbi Arthur E. Gould, in a Dr Seuss-like form:

You can build it very small

You can build it very tall

You can build it very large

You can build it on a barge

You can build it on a ship

Or on a roof but please don’t slip

You can build it on a wagon

You can build it on a dragon

You can make the shakh of wood

Would you, could you, yes you should

If your Sukkah is well made

You’ll have the right amount of shade

You can build it very wide

You cannot build it on its side

Build if your name is Jim

Or Sue or Ahmad or even Tim

And if it should be very cold

Stay there only if you’re bold

So build a Sukkah one and all

Make it large or make it small

Sukkah rules are short and snappy

Enjoy Sukkot, rejoice be happy.

Sukkahville challenges Jews to find a way to welcome guests—and contestants—who are not from our community. It also can spur governments to address issues of affordable housing. Because here, in Toronto, today, people live on the street or in temporary shelters all the time.

Sukkahville also serves as a reminder to keep balance in our lives. We need to breathe the air, take time to be outdoors, and restore a connection to land and water. If Sukkot is about sustainable living, then it is also a challenge for all of us to control consumption.

Whether it is our simple sukkot or these innovative ones, the vision is the same: to reach from the simple to the sublime, to use the temporary to aspire to the eternal, and to renew the ancient using contemporary creativity. By doing this we sanctify and sustain our lives here on earth. Thank you all for making Sukkahville a temporary reality.

http://www.sukkahville.com/sukkahville-2014-2/finalists/