Faulty Sukkah

My Jewish attachments have many beneficial non-negotiables, or at least minimally negotiables. I follow dietary restrictions.  My weekly Shabbat has its protocols that shut down some of the urgencies of the other days.  The Jewish calendar mandates seasons, usually in the form of Festivals.  Each has its joys, some its burdens.  Passover foods, the Omer Count, a dairy meal challenge for Shavuot, and uncomfortable Tisha B'Av in midsummer, the assembly of people not seen in a while for the Holy Days, the Sukkah that follows, festivities of Hanukkah, fruits of Tu B'Shvat, and the merriment of Purim.  Most challenge me in some way, whether creating a dinner, cleaning house, learning a liturgy portion, or simply being in shul when that's not my preferred destination.

Physical demands only come twice.  Preparing my house for Pesach requires multiple trips between my home's first floor and the basement, mostly to bring sometimes heavy boxes of stored dishes and cookware upstairs, then back down again at the Festival's conclusion.  Washing them can be tedious but preparing the food glorious.  Sukkot requires me to build a sukkah, a flimsy transient structure with a few requirements to make the structure valid.  That Festival is in progress.

Building our sukkah has gone through a few transformations over many years, but having one for our family, and usually for guests, has become one of those non-negotiables.  These structures vary considerably in durability, though none intended to be durable, and in effort required to assemble them.  Mine has transformed from one of wooden beams and cloth walls to a more commercial frame of rust-resistant steel pipes connected by plumbing joints.  A skin of canvas then gets placed around the frame, held in place by bungee anchors inserted into grommets and wrapped around the steel tubes.

The sukkah's validity is established by its roof.  Traditionally, that must come from branches, mostly evergreens, sometimes parts of corn stalks, not always readily available.  The commercial kits, which we use in recent years, have a series of wooden slats that get rolled out over the steel tubing.  The fit could be better.

As my wife and I enter our senior years, the physical capacity to assemble this has waned.  It requires a step ladder, which I have, but which has weathered over decades.  The tubes do not always fit securely into the joints.  Always a two-person job.  And placing the prefab roof atop the frame exposes the limitations of its construction which leaves little leeway for lapses in placement.  I found the branches easier to place, though harder to find.  

And then we have weather, once assembled.  The structure resembles a box kite.  Over the years, brisk winds of the noreaster season have displaced ours.  This year the winds created a topless sukkah, no longer in conformity with the rules of construction.  

Construction has taken a toll on me.  While coping with medial knee pain through physical therapy, the ups and downs of the step ladder, the need to reposition myself to insert tubing into joints, thread the bungees through the grommets, and balance the wooden roof onto the frame has challenged my physical therapy progress.  NSAIDs have gone from PRN to q12h with some benefit, but not enough to postpone orthopedic assessment.

While having my own sukkah has been a seasonal non-negotiable, the toll it has taken requires me to reconsider.  I could hire a handyman and direct him.  Or with some luck, the ortho folks can restore my knee, though they cannot reverse some other aging features that hint maybe a ladder creates too much risk.  Communal sukkahs trace to antiquity, suggesting that individual ones so common in suburbia many have in another era exceeded the financial ability and physical capacity of our ancestors.  This year's effort brings me to a branch point, figuratively and literally.  The sukkah will come down more easily than it went up.

Holiday Dinners

The Fall Calendar.  Kitchen time for me.  My synagogue decided to sponsor a dinner the evening before Rosh Hashanah.  It's a good thing for them to do.  They get people to come and stay for an evening service whose attendance has dwindled.  My experience with congregational meals usually has me heading home regretting that I subscribed. Many reasons, most traceable to a Dominant Influencer culture that grates on me.  Also exclusion from the kitchen, one of my favorite places to be as a Food Committee gave way to Sisterhood, with its Dominant Influencer. Something I revel in at home, designing the menus, inviting dinner guests, executing the creation of an elegant meal using home kitchen resources.  My favorite place to be, even before I get to the dining table.  Going to a synagogue dinner registers as a form of deprivation.

Three key meals, multiple secondary ones as the Holy Days play out.  RH, Shabbos Sukkot, and since traveling to an event with my new grandson, I can assemble a Shabbos dinner from their nearby Aldi for the Shabbos before YK.

I've made the menu grid for RH and Sukkot.  As I did this, the RH structure with my family traditions popped out at me from the grid.  I make a round challah, two if Shabbos.  I've known how to make a round spiral for many years, but this past year I learned how to make a four-strand interior braid with the overall shape remaining round.  We have apples and honey.  The Sisterhood, those ladies who exclude me from the congregational kitchen irrespective of my skill and interests, sell honey as a fundraiser.  Expensive, but better honey than the stuff that supports my honey cake.  That goes with apples.  I've gotten away from gefilte fish.  We still try to get to services on time.  Too many dinner courses make that difficult.  Instead, I make a chicken soup with discounted chicken parts that can be harvested for other uses.  Add carrots, an onion, maybe a turnip, a stalk or two of celery and commercial kosher chicken broth, some peppercorns, maybe a bay leaf.  Pastina or orzo for serving.  My wife makes a special rice kugel, more sweet than savory.  I usually make chicken as the main course. Some forms cook easily, others with more elegance.  You can never go wrong with boneless, skinless chicken breasts, that blank canvas of an entree that can be seasoned, seared, and baked, poached with herbs, made in an Insta-Pot, or prepared in a variety of sauces.  Carrots are the preferred vegetable, having to do with a play on words in their Yiddish form.  I've made glazed carrots, but sometimes plain boiled has advantages.  Dessert is always Honey Cake.  It has a basic recipe with endless variants.  Since we need to head to services, I do not serve alcohol other than a swallow of Concord Grape Wine with kiddush.  Seltzer or herb tea does the job.

Sukkot meals get eaten in our sukkah as much as weather permits.  We try to have guests shabbos, usually people who do not have their own sukkahs.  We also usually get invited somewhere during the holiday, but I reserve Shabbos for serving as host.  Here the menu gets more creative.  Two braided Challot, one for the guest to take home.  I've learned to make loaf gefilte fish. It is poached in seasoned water while still frozen, then cooled and served as slices with horseradish.  Soup appears in the menu, often Middle Eastern harira, sometimes chicken. Salad of some type, always with a dressing that I made myself.  The main course has fewer restrictions. Chicken Cacciatore goes well.  So does a half-turkey breast or a whole roasted chicken.  Maybe Bastilla, an elegant chicken pie assembled with a phyllo crust.  Roast meat gets a kugel of some type.  Vegetable on sale.  Dessert is usually a pareve cake.  Apple, nut torte, baklava.  And wine.  Serving in a cramped sukkah with small square table requires its own planning.

While many American Jews center their religious life around the Holy Days, sometimes the only opportunity to leverage reluctant worshipers to fork over hefty annual dues that keep their congregations functional the rest of the year, the luster for me had long since worn off.  In college, I reconnected with friends I'd not seen that summer.  Services usually needed some juggling with school work.  Each year had a twist or two.  Adult suburbia has became excessively programmed. Large crowds.  People of entitlement, either to the same aliyah they've had forever, choirs that mean more to the singers than the listeners, gatekeepers at the door, an influx before Yizkor with a mass exit on completion, an increasingly politicized Bond Appeal.  A programmed Event.  I come as a spectator for the most part.  It is those hours of sifting through online menus, reading possibilities from my cookbooks, extending guest invitations, building a home sukkah from a kit, and challenging my skill in the kitchen that makes the season special.  It's worth my best effort.

Consecutive Days

This fall, Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot occupy Thursday-Friday.  Add shabbos, which makes three consecutive restricted days three weekends out of four.  While our Rabbis regard these as special times to escape daily obligations, I kinda like what I do most days.  No electronic devices for three consecutive days, three weekends out of four?  That's a lot of FOMO.  The purpose of Yom Tovim and shabbos might be separation.  They have a measure of compensation for what will be missed.  Special dinners.  The preparatory efforts for shabbos each week and the Yom Tovim as they arise.  A completed sukkah.  Special liturgy.  An OLLI schedule that omits Thursday and Friday classes this semester.  But nine days of separation all in the same calendar month seems a lot.

I don't really miss the laptop when it is off.  Social Media really does get too absorbing.  It needs a break. Not much happens if I don't do crosswords for a few days.  FB, Reddit, and email avoidance challenge me more, though they shouldn't.  I've largely abandoned Twitter.  It's a detriment to me.  Minor withdrawal symptoms but don't miss it.  FB has a few contacts with friends, offset in a big way by unsolicited posts that the psych major Stanford alumni think will keep me on their screen instead of somebody else's.  Reddit might be a little harder, as I make contributions that others might find helpful, though few make contributions that I find helpful.  Setting these aside for shabbos each week is not hard.  Three consecutive days generates minor withdrawal, though never overt FOMO.

These three day breaks never really become Me Time, though.  I have guests or am a guest.  But some Me Time gets carved into those three days.  Social Media is not Me Time.

Rosh Hashanah with its social strains but new horizons completed.  Some sukkah inspiration ahead.  Then the concluding days.  The designers of the Hebrew calendar anticipated folks like me would be Jewish saturated by the end of this.  They scheduled the subsequent month to be devoid of special days, but nicknamed that month Mar Heshvan, or Bitter Heshvan, due to the absence of designated times other than shabbos.  I think of it more as respite.

Crammed Week

Some middle of the night insomnia got the better of me.  I arose to My Space.  It had been my intent to plan out my week as I do nearly all Sundays unless pre-empted by yontiff or travel, but being awake anyway I took out my new multicolored gel pens, semi-annual initiative affirmations, and markers to get a head start.  There's a lot for me, much of it not discretionary.  Sukkot arrives this week.  With it, a sukkah to finish building, a dinner at somebody else's sukkah the first night, special guest with special menu at my sukkah for shabbos, a Torah reading done twice, and a haftarah reading done once.  I will need to get a better folding eating table for the sukkah, using the current one for serving.  We have a fly infestation, far less severe than our last one, but it needs some attention.

On Thursday evening I make a public medical presentation via Zoom.  My monthly Medscape submission needs writing with a few days out of action for yontiff.  This will be the first sent to my new interim editor.  Expenses get logged this week, and it being the end of the quarter, an Excel summary needs to be created for review.  My financial advisor thinks we should get together.  

Monthly donation day arrives right before yontiff.  OLLI has a full schedule this week.  Our congregational President tossed a verbal gauntlet that needs a response, a very mixed response.  The bank branch that houses our safe deposit box will be closing within a few weeks.  Need to make a transfer.  I think I know where I keep the key.  Have lost any recollection of what the box houses, but it's a good opportunity to reconsider what it should contain.

And then the ongoing exercise, tidying, reading, writing, medicines, and thinking.  The special initiatives eventually resolve.  These don't, as it is never really clear what determines their completion.

And before you know it, we're into next month, with its typical daily and weekly cadences. The Hebrew month which almost coincides this year, is called Mar Cheshvan, or Bitter Cheshvan, since it the only month without a special calendar event other than Rosh Chodesh.  Between Holy Days, travel, and preparation for arriving commitments, I'm ready for a month's activity reduction, or really replacement of this surge in committed days with something more discretionary.

 

Sukkot

Sukkot.  This year finds me less motivated than in the past.  I feel worn out, disappointed with the experience of my shul, maybe down a few rungs on the ladder of observance from a year or two ago.  I bentsched lulav on Day 4 of 7.  Our sukkah came out well, definitely worth the purchase of a pre-fab.  Bringing a harvest to Jerusalem in Temple times may have been the precursor of what we think of as vacation.  Getting away for a few days, maybe a little travel, getting deprived of some of your money in exchange for some satisfaction.  Not having to go to work but only a half day in shul without all the shabbos restrictions of the other days off.  Here it takes on something similar with anticipation and preparation to build the sukkah and acquire Four Species.  Between Bond Appeal and synagogue appeal the week before some of one's funds have already been reduced. No tfillin the entire week.  I must say, though, waving the lulav never really inspired me in a serious way and the final day of Hoshana Rabba I've always regarded as cult-like.  It rarely comes out late enough in October to usher in the changing weather and changing clocks of autumn.

For the students it introduces exam season.  They've attended classes for 4-6 weeks most years and therefore it's time to assess what has been retained.  For Federal workers Columbus Day provides a real day off.  For many of us we encounter Open Season when we can adjust our employee benefits.  Those things often pre-occupy us, making the festival of Sukkot almost an afterthought were it not for the necessary preparation beforehand and the more gala Simchat Torah night to follow.

For me, the season also marks the approximate mid-point of my six semiannual projects.  I took Board exams, made slow but serious progress on making the bedroom my sanctuary, have not yet made the blog interactive, not done any estate planning, my skill with the iPod has not advanced in three months and my weight is up a few pounds from July.  My disposition has gotten a little better though.