Allan Appel Photo
Rabbi James Ponet in his sukkah on the last night of the holiday.
In these fragile times, it is possible to find celebration and even the joy of a little truth lurking in the midst of the most temporary and vulnerable circumstances.
So I was reminded Thursday night when I hung out in Rabbi James Ponet’s sukkah.
A sukkah is a flimsy booth open to the stars that Jews jerry-rig in their yards this time each year to commemorate a harvest-themed seven-day holiday called Sukkot, or the Festival of Booths.
Thursday night, the final of the holiday, I got to share the evening in the sukkot at the Everit Street home of former longtime Yale Hillel Director and University Chaplain Rabbi James Ponet and his wife Elana. They had erected their three-sided cerulean blue beauty to match the color of their recently painted house.
The Ponets’ sukkah, like most, is built behind the house — in this case, right on the connected back porch.
“The whole idea,” Elana noted, “is if you leave your house behind, there is always this place, this sukkah,” and though temporary and vulnerable and fragile, it too is your home.
“This year the meaning is that ‘home’ is a temporary domicile. We live with the comforting illusion of permanence,” Jim explained.
Jim knew that his old pal (your reporter) has had a soft spot over the years for Rabbi Siddhartha Gautama. So he added, “This is our most Buddhist of holidays” celebrating not the settled and bourgeois quality of the Jewish people, but their nomadic history and impulses.
Observed on the heels of the more somber Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur “Days of Awe,” Sukkot is a fine lazy man’s holiday.
You of course have to build the temporary structure. But it’s generally not a big effort if you use your Home Depot-esque sukkah kit. In Israel, where the Ponets lived for many years, Jim recalled, the municipal authorities cut down greenery and branches and leave them lying on the streets, making especially easy the decoration of the open-to-the-sky lattice work roof of the sukkahs of Jerusalem.
“Anything that grows belongs in the sukkah,” Elana noted, or on its roof or walls, creative freelance decoration encouraged.
In the sukkah “crawl,” modeled on the bar crawl, families promenade up and down the block in Jewish neighborhoods (including New Haven’s Westville) wishing neighbors a chag sameach (happy holiday) while checking out the handiwork and getting ideas for next year.
Elana loves the simplicity of the holiday. “There are no special foods and only a few relaxed blessings,” which we recited quickly as the grilled eggplant (from the Ponet garden) covered with aromatic tahini was being brought in.
Those blessings include thanks for fulfilling the commandment of sitting in the sukkah, and then blessings over the etrog, a fine yellow citron fruit, and the lulav, a long palm branch, which Elana shook making a pleasant rustling rattle. Symbolism here abounds: It all means just about anything you want. Like bringing together all the living species of the earth. Or, perhaps, “Dinner is ready! Come and get it!”
Elana Ponet with lulav and etrog.
I think what I love best about the sukkah derives from the rabbinical lore that in every sukkah, you are visiting with all the Big Names of the Jewish tradition. The past is alive, while invisible, of course. Sitting there with you are the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their happy (well, some of the time) spouses Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, along with all the kids, the concubines, the mavericks.
It doesn’t stop there. You are encouraged to “invite” in whatever folks you want to spend time with, including the deceased. It is as if the sukkah were the location of your own show, the way the late lamented early TV personality Steve Allen (I’d like to spend time with him in a sukkah) used to bring on as his special guests folks dressed up as Socrates or Leonardo or Moses for lively conversation.
“The daughters of Zelophehad,” Jim Ponet added to his invitation list, with an obvious wink, testing my Biblical knowledge. “Virginia Woolf, Marie Bonaparte.”
The Ponets used to put up pictures in their sukkah of people they wanted to spend time with, often based on what books were being read in the house at the time of the holiday. Those “guests” included Hannah Arendt and Anna Freud. Back in 2000, around the time the great Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai died, his widow Chana was a guest in the Ponet sukkah.
“We put up his picture,” Elana said of Amichai, “and one of his poems.”
Thursday evening there were no pictures in the Ponets’ sukkah. Just warm yellow lights illuminating the booth and unadorned walls, and hanging down from the lattice ceiling were only corn husks that a neighbor had brought over. Yes, a kind of Buddhist sukkah this night.
And what conversation takes place in the sukkah? Well, in our case, we hadn’t seen the Ponets for much too long. So we caught up about the kids, then got to remembering birthdays we have marked together, events we have attended, walks we have taken.
Several I couldn’t remember; several they couldn’t. Forgetfulness, the first cousin of transience, is cool and embraced in the sukkah. No impulse or need to take out your phone to jog memory; it’s all good. It’s a good place to be both young and silly and also to grow old, and sillier.
The Ponets’ sukkah, like most, is built behind the house — in this case, right on the connected back porch. “The whole idea,” Elana noted, “is if you leave your house behind, there is always this place, this sukkah,” and though temporary and vulnerable and fragile, it too is your home.
What a beautiful story and photos. Since I am not Jewish, I had forgotten about this day and the heart-warming tradition. I'll try to remember next year. I did attend one Sukkah at BEKI in Westville one year, and it was very enjoyable.