WSJ: Big Tent in the Big City

By RALPH GARDNER JR., Wall Street Journal

When there’s a sukkah design competition in Union Square among international artists and architects with the mayor announcing the winner, as he did Monday, you know there’s something going on—that sukkot, temporary shelters commemorating those the Israelites dwelled in during the exodus from Egypt, and which pop up around town this time of year to celebrate the weeklong Jewish holiday, have entered the wider culture. (By the way, sukkah is a single tent or enclosure. Sukkot is plural.)

I missed the Union Square competition; when I passed by Wednesday only one of the huts remained—the winning entry, Fractured Bubble, made from plywood, marsh grass, and twine and looking something like a giant exploding coconut.

However, I managed to make the construction of Bryant Park’s more traditional sukkah before its official opening Wednesday evening. That sukkah could have been mistaken for a large construction shed were it not for the open-air roof decorated with cedar boughs and colorful autumn leaves. Observant Jews take their meals in a sukkah for the duration of the festival, which started Wednesday and ends Sept. 29.

“You have to be open to the sky, to the elements,” explained Rabbi Joshua Metzger, the leader of Chabad Lubavitch of Midtown Manhattan, who was supervising the hut’s construction.

“We’re reminded of the temporary and transient nature of life. The security comforts we have in our homes and offices are not permitted. If it were covered it would not be a kosher sukkah. We’re under the blessings and inspiration and care of divine providence.”

I feel that way—exposed to the elements and the vicissitudes of existence—even with a roof over my head, but I get the rabbi’s point.

Unlike the Union Square sukkah, which was more of an art installation—”I don’t think they were meant as actual sukkah for use,” the rabbi said—the Bryant Park structure, celebrating its 13th year adjacent to the fountain on the west side of the park, certainly is. Thousands of local residents, office workers, and tourists, will flock to the sukkah over the next several days, in part because there aren’t a lot of alternatives in the midtown area.

“You have all these skyscrapers around,” the rabbi explained, as he surveyed the huge buildings bordering the park. “You don’t have anywhere to put a sukkah.

“Many won’t have a morsel of food outside it,” the rabbi went on. “If you come at lunchtime, you’ll see 150 people eating here.”

Including himself. “He won’t even have a drink outside the sukkah,” said Brocha Metzger, the rabbi’s wife, when she dropped by with two of their four children—Sarah-Perel, 11 years old, and Mendel, 8—to see how the construction was coming along.

Mrs. Metzger said her husband travels from their apartment in Murray Hill to have the morning’s first drink of water in the sukkah.

In addition to those who prefer to brown-bag it, Chabad Lubavitch of Midtown hosts full dinners by advance reservation, during the first few days of the festival.

“Traditional kosher food—matzo-ball soup, potato kugel,” Rabbi Metzger explained. “We single-handedly keep all the kosher caterers in business.”

“Any dessert?” I wondered.

“Pastries,” the rabbi said.

Don’t ask me how—perhaps because I brought it up—but we got into a discussion about seven-layer cake. It seems to me that most kosher delis serve a pretty decent seven-layer.

Rabbi Metzger was reluctant to name his favorite, not necessarily because there’s anything sacrilegious about it—this is a harvest festival, after all—but because of the authority implicit in a rabbi’s recommendation.

“Other restaurants would resent it—’Rabbi, why didn’t you recommend me?’ We’re really going off-topic.”

It’s easier to observe Sukkot in the suburbs where families can construct or even purchase ready-made sukkahs and set them up on their patios or in their backyards. But apparently even regulation sukkah skylights will suffice.

“They’re open and able to stay open,” said Chesky Rosenberg, a construction worker who was who was helping to construct the Bryant Park sukkah for the sixth year in a row, and recently installed two of the skylights in his home. “I get to use it through the year as a sun roof.”

But what about the requirement that the space be covered with something that grew from the ground and was cut off, such as tree branches, or even two-by-fours. “We bought a mat that is weaved and made from thin bamboo,” Mr. Rosenberg explained. “If I’m busy doing it for everybody else I must go easy on myself.”

Mrs. Metzger said the Chabad of Midtown will be sticking to cedar. “This is kind of the old-fashioned way,” she said, adding that the fragrance of the wood, “also brings home the agricultural element…it’s just not pleasant when you eat soup and something falls in.”