The “Minhagim” My Family Has on Sukkos and Simchas Torah

By Mordechai Schmutter

From time to time, I run a yom tov article that is really not written for you, apparently – it’s just a way of recording my family’s apparent minhagim. Minhagim are treasured traditions, handed down from generation to generation as a way of keeping our mesorah alive, but the problem is that for the most part, handing things down in this way is like playing a game of telephone, where, over the years, some customs get added, muddled, or taken out.

That said, it’s always a good idea to write down your family’s customs somewhere so your grandkids know, going forward, whether your kids ever actually paid attention when you talked.

1. Although I spell it Sukkos, I have a minhag to pronounce it Sukiss. I also say Shavuiss and Shabbiss.

2. We have a minhag to, in the days between Yom Kippur and Sukkos, pay a visit to Home Depot. Even if we don’t need anything. This is an ancient minhag, passed down from our forefathers, and we don’t question it.

3. I have a minhag, after we finish putting up the sukkah every year, to go inside the house, go upstairs, and look out the window.

4. I have a minhag to put up the sukkah on a Sunday. And to panic every year about how few Sundays are left. This is despite the fact that I mostly work from home every day of the week. But I do want my kids available so they can help me by bringing out a few of the poles and asking me if they’re getting rewarded.

5. When I’m putting up the schach mat, I have a minhag to get splinters.

6. My kids have a minhag to hand me the schach poles one at a time, perpendicular to the direction I need them in.

7. We have a minhag to hang a picture of a sukkah in our sukkah. And in that sukkah, there is also a picture of a sukkah. I wonder if we’re just part of someone’s picture.

8. My father has a minhag, when looking at esrogim, to ask if they have anything else in the back.

9. I have a minhag to spend 13 minutes frowning knowledgeably at esrogim before settling on the second one I looked at.

10. I have a minhag to buy my hadassim in a bag so that I can’t see them until I get home, but I don’t buy my esrog and lulav in a bag.

11. I have a minhag to put my hadassim and aravos in the fridge, like they did in the midbar.

12. My aravos have a minhag to start turning brown the moment I pay for them.

13. We have a minhag to zip our sukkah door closed when everyone leaves it, even though animals can go right under the tarp anyway and people know how to use zippers. Even burglars. I don’t know what burglar is going to be stumped by a zipper, but I guess one who wants to steal folding chairs.

14. My mother-in-law has a minhag, handed down from her ancestors, that the first night of Sukkos, she comes out to the sukkah in a coat. It doesn’t matter how hot it is, or how hot it was when she was outside five minutes before yom tov.

15. I have a minhag to serve soup on Sukkos, so we can see if the rain ruins it. We have this soup even if it’s 90 degrees out and my mother-in-law is wearing a coat.

16. We have a minhag to pop in to look at other people’s sukkahs, even though I don’t know what we’re looking for. Are we seeing if they’re kosher? Are we structural engineers? It’s not like I do home inspections during the year.

17. My kids have a minhag to say that d’var Torah about how the samech of “sukkah” has four walls and the kaf has three and the hey has two-and-a-half, even though no one in history has ever built a two-and-a-half-wall sukkah that looks like a hey. How does that little half-wall stay up? Why do you need a doorway if you’re already missing a wall? What are you, Avraham Avinu? And yeah, it could be that the letters are just a mnemonic device. So what’s the mnemonic device to remind you not to incorporate the vav into this d’var Torah?

18. We have a minhag to turn on our neighbor’s motion-sensitive backyard light at least once over the course of yom tov.

19. The non-Jewish neighbors behind me have a minhag to do construction 3 feet from our sukkah while we’re trying to eat. Drilling, hammering, sawing, the works. Especially when we try to sing. If there is nothing for them to build, they have a minhag to mow their lawn.

20. My wife has a minhag to urge me to sing over the construction. Like the neighbors are going to say, “Ooh, that’s some nice singing. Let’s stop drilling and listen.” I think this might be why they’re doing construction.

21. I have a minhag to tell my kids every time they pick up the arbah minim to watch the pitum. Even my teenagers.

22. My kids have a minhag, while they’re watching the pitum, to bump the tip of the lulav into random walls and fellow mispallelim.

23. I have a minhag, if my esrog is not perfectly straight, to hold it at an angle so that it looks perfectly straight to me. I’m the one who paid for it!

24. I have a minhag to lose one of the rings around my lulav on the first day of Sukkos.

25. Everyone in my shul has a minhag, during Hoshanos, to totally forget how to walk.

26. I have a minhag to always end Hoshanos on the exact opposite side of the shul from where I need to be.

27. We have a minhag to go out to eat on Chol Hamoed to a restaurant with a sukkah in middle of the street, so that we can literally feel the cars passing by.

28. I have a minhag to forget to make the bracha of Leishev Basukkah several times over the course of yom tov, even though I made it a point to go out to the sukkah, bringing everything I need with me, over the course of several trips, and now I am in a sukkah surrounded by signs about Sukkos, and I still forget to say, “Leishev Basukkah.”

29. I have a minhag, on Chol Hamoed, to eat yogurt and hard-boiled eggs at the zoo. Because we don’t see enough wildlife in our Sukkah. (Note: This minhag extends to Chol Hamoed Pesach as well.)

30. We have a minhag, at some point over Chol Hamoed, to say, “It always rains on Chol Hamoed.”

31. Our minhag is not to wear tefillin on Chol Hamoed, though I kind of wish I would, because I’m a lefty, and people stare at me and say, “Hey, you’re holding your lulav in the wrong hand!” And that way I can say, “Yeah, well, I also wore my tefillin on the wrong hand.”

32. I have a minhag not to knock any leaves off my Hoshanos, but not for lack of trying.

33. I have a minhag to come back inside on Hoshanah Rabbah and tell my wife that I threw our hoshanos on top of the sukkah, and she has a minhag to yell, “No! I wanted to plant those!”

34. My wife has a minhag to attempt to grow aravos every year, usually in a place that we will hopefully remember not to mow them come spring.

35. My shul has a minhag on Simchas Torah to sing the very same songs that our forefathers sang the very first time they finished the Torah.

36. I have a minhag to pick up Simchas Torah flags for my kids at the supermarket for free, and I don’t know why. No kid uses them. Are they going to hold yet another stick that they can use to poke adults while walking in a circle?

37. When I was growing up, a lot of shuls seemed to have a minhag to play pranks on the chazzan during Mussaf on Simchas Torah. How on earth was that okay? Maybe the poor guy had yahrtzeit?

38. My kids’ yeshiva has a minhag to give off on Isru Chag. And if Isru Chag is a Shabbos, they give off on Sunday and call it Isru Chag, like it’s a nidcheh, even though the only thing I’m aware of that gets pushed off like that is taaneisim. It’s taaneisim and Isru Chag.

39. I have a minhag to sit down the day after yom tov with my kids’ school papers and realize that I forgot to record how many seconds each kid learned each day, especially since, for several of those days in a row, I couldn’t write.

40. I have a minhag to be at a total loss as to what to do with my esrogim after Sukkos. We just have a box of tiny brown rocks that smell good that I don’t want to show my kids because they’re just going to break off the pitums.

41. I’m thinking of starting a minhag to buy flowers for my wife before Sukkos. That way she’ll do whatever chemical process she usually does to keep them alive for a week, and I can sneak my aravos in there every night.

–Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia, the COLlive Magazine and other publications. He also has six books out and does stand-up comedy. He can be contacted at [email protected]