A sukkah made of thread

Posted

New twist on an old idea

By Michael Orbach

Issue of September 17, 2010/ 9 Tishrei 5771

Can a sukkah be made entirely of glass? What about a sukkah made of interlocking pieces of wood that can extend infinitely? Is a sukkah kosher if it’s made out of cardboard signs, each purchased from someone who’s homeless?

There are the questions Joshua Foer is dealing with right now.

Foer, a Jewish freelance journalist and author, decided in May to launch a worldwide sukkah contest. The challenge: strictly follow Jewish law in reimagining the sukkah, the temporary huts Jews are commanded to live in during the Sukkot holiday that begins next Wednesday night.

Taking their cues directly from Masechet Sukkah, rules included the minimum number of walls a sukkah must have (two and a half), and guidelines for s’chach, the roof of the sukkah (that has to let in less sun than shade but must not completely prevent rain from entering). Foer teamed up with Reboot, the organization that ran Yom Kippur-themed questions on a billboard in Times Square last year, and launched SukkahCity.com by opening the contest to everyone.

“We were shocked by the response it got,” Foer told The Jewish Star. “Over 600 architects from 43 countries — places like Kazakhstan, Egypt, Lebanon. From every race, faith, and creed, we had people wrestling with the laws of the sukkah. It was kind of magical.”

The designs varied and even included something called an “Air Sukkah” which we are still unclear about. One sukkah was designed to resemble a burning bush. Foer appointed a jury that included New Yorker magazine architecture critic Paul Goldberger and Thom Mayne, the 2005 winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered to be the highest award in the architecture field. The jury also included Israeli architect Ron Arad, and Michael Arad (no relation), the designer of the National September 11 Memorial. The jury convened in August and picked twelve designs from the submissions. The designs all share a single element: each is an innovation in what is typically considered a sukkah.

“Half the winners were kosher sukkahs and didn’t need anything done; the other half we ended up needing to tweak,” Foer explained.

For help in making the sukkot kosher, Foer turned to Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Rabbi Avi Weiss’ rabbinical seminary. Dani Passow, a semicha student, worked with the group facing various challenges with their designs.

“One of the structures involved a [sukkah made from a] single thread,” Foer said. “S’chach can’t be directly supported by steel so we had to come up with a way to make this work.”

The group ended up using an intermediate material to anchor the covering to make the sukkah kosher. In another design, the roof consisted of a single large log that was then perforated in order to make the sukkah kosher.

“We had the entire Yeshivat Chovevei Torah beis medrash discussing these structures and whether they could work within these traditional design constraints,” Foer laughed. “There’s quite a bit of flexibility built in [to the laws of the sukkah] — I would argue it’s an invitation.”

An invitation to innovate, that is, sourced directly from the Talmud.

“The rabbis sitting around debating whether an elephant could function as a wall of a sukkah: what possible circumstances could have lead the rabbis to have that discussion?” Foer asked.

Foer said that the response and the enthusiasm generated by the contest tied directly into the meaning of the holiday.

“I can’t think of anything else in architecture that attempts to do so much in such a small building,” Foer said. “This is the story of every Jewish ritual. We wrap everything up in layers of meaning, history and symbolism and the sukkah is no different; you spend a week engaging in collective memory.”

Foer continued: “[The sukkah] is also a structure that makes you confront the idea of impermanence. You can’t live in a structure that doesn’t have solid walls for a week and not ponder that your actual home is not that much more permanent than this… It really forces you to confront the ephemerality of the things in our lives and the ephemerality of our lives. I think architects got that.”

Foer also finds an element of social justice in Sukkot. “The theme of the holiday is homelessness and wandering,” he said.

Roger Bennett of Reboot, Foer's partner in the effort, offered a similar take. He explained that the project was taking "the core values of the holiday -- of abundance and scarcity, home and homelessness -- as well as hospitality -- and holding them out for all to grapple with by building a temporary biblical-esque city in the heart of New York."

Having a good time was also an important part of the design contest.

“Sukkot is about rejoicing,” Foer explained. “Yom Simchaseinu (the Day of our Rejoicing) — the happiest festival of the Jewish calendar. The idea that we take architecture and use that as a means of rejoicing is an exciting idea for architects.”

The winning sukkot are being built in a warehouse in Brooklyn and will be put up in Union Square Park in Manhattan on Sept. 19 and 20. A contest on the New York magazine website will decide the People’s Choice Sukkah, which will then remain in Union Square until Oct. 2. The other entries will be auctioned off for Housing Works, a non-profit that seeks to house the homeless.

In keeping with the added mitzvah of constructing the sukkah immediately after Yom Kippur, Foer said the sukkot will be brought to Union Square at midnight on Saturday, Motza’ei Yom Kippur.