Sukkah City – From Under the Fig Tree

What a difference a year makes. Last autumn, New York City was all agog at the prospect of “Sukkah City” taking root in Union Square Park. Eleven different designs of an outdoor hut, the fruits of an international design competition, were scattered around the perimeter of the park, drawing thousands of visitors and generating considerable press, all of it favorable.

But this fall, in striking contrast, an attempt to install a sukkah in nearby TriBeCa’s Duane Park by a local Chabad rabbi and his wife kicked up quite a rumpus of disapproval.

In lieu of a chorus of hosannas, of sprightly talk about open source tradition and artistic innovation, the dominant register was of negativity and resistance. Citing the First Amendment, opponents of the sukkah claimed that the structure ran the risk of violating the separation of church and state. “I don’t want to encourage having all sorts of religious things in our public parks,” stated a neighborhood resident.

Perhaps it was too much to hope that “Sukkah City” might betoken a sea change in the public’s embrace of the ancient ritual structure. After all, for much of their history, urban American Jews found it much too difficult to erect a sukkah of their own, preferring to rely on that of their local synagogue.

When American Jews first lived in tenements, there was hardly any room for a sukkah, save for an uncongenial fire escape. Later still, when upwardly mobile American Jews moved to well-equipped apartment houses, erecting a sukkah clashed too strenuously with their newly acquired bourgeois norms of discretion and politesse. And these days, amid heightened concern about the establishment of religion, a public sukkah continues to be somewhat of a shaky proposition.

Still, as things turned out, there is room for common ground. Happily, the residents of TriBeCa secured an alternative venue for the Chabad sukkah. Instead of nesting in a public space, it found a temporary home on an empty lot, the private property of a local real estate company with a strong sense of neighborliness.

Paris has the Eiffel Tower, London its Big Ben and for two days this week, New York has Sukkah City.

Thanks to an architectural competition conceived of by Joshua Foer and administered and funded by Reboot, 12 different, decidedly postmodern versions of the ancient ritual structure (or booth) whose origins date back to Biblical times, will briefly take root in Union Square Park come Sunday and Monday.

Much like Christo's 2005 site specific project, The Gates, in which Central Park was awash in orange-colored flags, its downtown cousin, once the scene of countless labor demonstrations and rallies, is now awash in sukkahs (or, to be correct about it, sukkot).

The intrusion of an age-old, religiously-mandated architectural idiom into the modern urban landscape lends a special frisson, perhaps even a touch of naughtiness, to the proceedings; call it playful incongruity.

Equally incongruous, especially for those familiar with the often hastily cobbled, jerry-built, aesthetically inchoate form of most sukkahs, is the high degree of aestheticism lavished on these 12 exemplars.

Most booths are lucky if they remain standing throughout the week-long festival of Succoth. In striking contrast, these are the handiwork of trained architects; they're beautifully assembled, handsomely crafted, and well thought out.

But then, incongruity and aesthetics are not the only things that render Sukkah City a real treat for the eye and the spirit.

What's most exhilarating is the way the sukkah has been transformed from a curiosity into a spectacle. For much of its history in the United States, the sukkah was a private, unobtrusive bit of business. Mindful of what the neighbors would think, most American Jews, at least until fairly recently, kept their succahs to themselves. Some American Jews even went so far as to miniaturize it, rendering the outdoor structure into a centerpiece for their dining room table.

But no more. Thanks to this imaginative and affirming event – a happening, in the best sense of the word - the sukkah has found a place for itself in the modern public square.

"Single Thread" by Matter Practice. Sukkah City website. Courtesy of Joshua Foer.

Tag: Sukkah City

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