Celebrating Sukkot in the time of COVID-19

 One of the side effects of COVID-19 is that we have had to transform normative religious practice. We have gotten used to attending funerals and shivas via zoom. Many rabbis, including mine, have set aside the usual prohibitions against using electronics on Shabbat and holidays so at the very least we could join together rather than being isolated.

COVID has had all of us who care about Jewish law and practice looking at each COVID-19 affected ritual with new eyes. Sukkot begins tonight. Both my building and my synagogue have been deliberating how one can use a communal sukkah safely. Is it an indoor space? How safe is it for people who are not part of one household so sit together in close proximity especially doing activities that text to maximize sprays of droplets from mouths? .How can a large community of people maximize the number of people who can fulfill the mitzvah?

I have been thinking about these questions as well. I naturally thought back to the granular discussions of what exactly is a sukkah that is in the first chapter of the tractate of Sukkah. When I was in tenth grade we studied these texts along with the later G'marot, rabbinic discussions that expound on this conversation. When I first learned these texts I was delighted at how out of the box our rabbis were willing to think.

Those discussions which you can read here, explore the outer limits of what a sukkah can be, how tall? how big? how small?  Which materials are permissible and which are not? can you turn a bed into a sukkah? can you lie under your bed inside a sukkah?

In learning those texts back in 1975 I learned that the smallest possible sukkah is essentially one that is large enough to hold your head and shoulders, similar to a study carrel. In thinking about this particular Sukkot I thought that a tiny sukkah would allow people top safely fulfill the mitzvah of eating in a sukkah.

A neighbor had gotten a large delivery in a cardboard box and discarded the box. It was a perfect size. I turned the box on its side and reinforced all of the corners with duct tape. If I were a better blogger, I would have taken photos of the process. I carefully cut an opening into the top and covered it with plastic screening that I stapled to the sukkah.

The cardboard as a little flimsy. Decorating the sides of the sukkah was not just a matter of aesthetics but would also strengthen the structure.  

This photo from, Sukkah Scenes, a company with a really tiny niche market, they sell plastic posters to decorate your sukkah actually served as inspiration.

Ok, I may have looked at the photo too late at night when I am prone to be silly. But to my skewed eye, this looked like a stable of esteemed rabbis each on in their own stall. I thought that it would be wonderful to decorate our little sukkah with people I admired.

I was having trouble locating images of some of the Jewish greats that I wanted on my sukkah. Instead, I added images of synagogues and communities important either to my family or my husband's.  

The great jews pictured here include the poet Ibn Gabirol, Ruth Bader Ginzburg, and Simcha Bunum, a disciple of the Kotzke Rebbe.  Next to RBG is an image of the writer Sholom Aleichem. There were no images of the Kotztker rebbe himself. The grand synagogue is in Warsaw, the smaller one above it is in Zastavna and was likely built by one of my Weisglass relatives. The synagogue interior is in Kalish, Poland birthplace of my great grandfather.

You can see the big tropical leaves I have used for the schach, the leafy roofing material. You can spot the famous etching of Maimonides and the large synagogue in Czernowitz where my maternal grandmother came from. 

Below the domed Czernowitz, synagogue is a street scene from Tulchyn, the birthplace of my husband's paternal grandfather.

I also decorated the outside of my sukkah with a photo of Henrietta Szold, the synagogue in Konin, the birthplace of my paternal grandfather, and a photo of Beth David Synagogue, my father's childhood synagogue in Miami, and another copy of the Tulchyn street view.

 I included a photo of my mother and husband's childhood synagogue in East New York, Brooklyn.

Three big tropical leaves make up the schach.

 Chag sameach!