TheSuccah:soontobe apandemicessential
THE FESTIVAL of Succot has two origins: once an ancient harvest festival, celebrating the final gathering in of the crops, it was then established as a commemoration of the Exodus. Clearly, one of my ancestors must have been doing the navigating; otherwise, why did the Children of Israel wander about for 40 years? It’s only feasible if a long-ago Calman was issuing instructions: “So, we turn left at the bendy palm tree. No – oops, we should have turned left about 50 miles back. Hold on, let me just turn the map round again….”
During our desert sojourn, the Israelites — bricks and cement being somewhat thin on the ground — had to put up temporary shelters. In fact, it’s likely that they used tents of some sort, but there’s something about a loose assemblage of gathered branches, partly open above to allow us a glimpse of the stars, that feels a lot more traditional than hunkering down in a two-man pop-up special from Millets.
We know that a succah is a quintessentially Jewish construction because it is supposed to be flimsy and temporary — to remind us of the precariousness of our existence in the wilderness. It is only supposed to last the length of Succot — seven or eight days, depending on your preferred stripe of Judaism. In our household, frankly, we’d count ourselves lucky if anything we build stays up past teatime on the first day.
My husband Larry does not have an impressive track record when it comes to assembling things. When I was heavily pregnant, and panicking that the changing table we had bought from Ikea was still in its cardboard box, Larry and his brother, who has marginally better DIY skills (about that of a semi-competent five year old rather than an easily distracted toddler) set aside an afternoon for The Assembling of the Changing Table. After four hours, and plenty of swearing, they declared it done and I was called to come bear witness and shower them with praise.
“It’s fantastic,” I said, “But I can’t open the bottom drawer.”
“Ah, yes, we had a problem with that – we just won’t use that one.”
“But we’ll need every inch of drawer space!” I fixed him with my beady stare: I’m about to bring forth an entirely new human being from my loins, mate – fix the drawer!
During lockdown, apparently having forgotten that his Jewish DNA is a handicap when it comes to assembling flatpack furniture, Larry bought some drawers to construct with our teenage son. Result: one lost weekend, again a lot of swearing, plus one trip to the dump to rid the house of the evidence – an unsalvageable horrific mutant drawer unit that could neither be completed nor dismantled to start again.
Now in the hallway there is a huge cardboard box, containing its replacement from a different company – a fully assembled chest of drawers.
If all else fails, I am thinking of using the box as our succah. With a few palm fronds and a couple of suspended pomegranates, I think it’ll be just the job.
Realising that the latest injunction to work from home if we can presents serious problems for some people, the government is looking for ‘creative and imaginative’ solutions to support jobs.
If you have young children, they can disturb your concentration with their annoyingly frequent demands for diversions such as being fed and having their bottoms wiped. If you are in a flatshare, it’s hard for all of you to work at the kitchen table at the same time. Do you organise shifts? What happens if you are trying to have a Zoom meeting and, instead of having impressive shelves of worthy books as your background, you’ve got Nick and Josh arm-wrestling at the kitchen worktop while they wait for their crumpets to toast?
Because of these challenges, the government has come up with an ingenious way to support working at home, by rolling out Succot across the whole of the UK (except, of course, in Scotland where sources reveal that Nicola Sturgeon is trying to establish whether making Succot a Scottish holiday is more likely to increase support for Scottish Independence).
In the scheme – Twigs Save Lives – large bundles of twigs would be delivered to every household, one per adult, enabling you to construct a home office succah. This would allow you to work from home, while maintaining distance from others, ideal if you need to self-isolate. It offers a modicum of privacy, should you choose to sleep there too and avoid even a short commute. Obviously, while it’s perfectly practical if you have a desk-based job, it could be cramped if your job involves, say, assembling transit vans or supervising giant looms for the mass-production of fabric; in these instances, where more space is required, the government will consider applications for a second bundle of twigs.
Traditionally, you assemble your succah in the garden, against one wall of the house, but if you live in a flat, you can use the roof of the block, or a balcony. Alternatively, if you have no outside space, you may build your succah in a park or on the pavement. I’ve set mine up just outside Waitrose as that means I can nip in first thing before it gets busy.