USA: Sukkahs for New York

Sukkahs for New York

Earlier in the summer I wrote in The Forward about the great Sukkah competition in New York called Sukkah City. The contest proved wildly popular with architects and artists from around the world and approximately 600 entries were received by the organizers. I’m not sure who was able to evaluate these for their faithfulness to halacha. Certainly the twelve chosen winners are imaginative designs but some may off the mark for religious observance. Maybe that should be so, since these winners were erected earlier this week on public land in Union Square, and I for one am always squeamish whenever I see any semblance of religious practice impinge on secular and pluralistic space. mJust as in America we must protect the right of religious practice; we must be equally clear about the separation of church (or synagogue or mosque) and state. Still, in Lower Manhattan, churchyards have always been seen as public open green spaces, offering respite from claustrophobia, so I think it OK if sukkahs occupy Union Square for forty-eight hours. What the radicals who used to demonstrate in Union Square would think I do not know, but the harvest holiday huts do seem in keeping with the new agrarian nature of the place, since the park is surrounded by what is now the city's best known farmer's market.

The panel of judges had no rabbis or Jewish scholars, but did include Pritzker prize-winning architect Thom Mayne, The New Yorker’s architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, NYU Environmental Health Clinic Director Natalie Jeremijenko, and designer Ron Arad. The winners were selected in a blind review, and include the Brooklyn-based firms Matter Architecture Practice; Bittertang, winners of the 2010 Architectural League Prize; and Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu, winner of the 2010 MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program.

One structure, the "Fractured Bubble" designed by Babak Bryan and Henry Grosman was voted on by New Yorkers to stand throughout the week-long festival of Sukkot as the “People’s Choice Sukkah.” Selected entries are also being displayed in an exhibit at the Center for Architecture in New York City during the month of September. The process and results of the competition, along with construction documentation and critical essays, will be published in the forthcoming book "Sukkah City: Radically Temporary Architecture for the Next Three Thousand Years."

The twelve winning designs and a much larger selection of entries can be seen here and is worth the browsing time. I have not had a chance to look at the carefully yet, but when I do I'll have some additional comments on some of the most common design trends and some of my personal favorites.

A Sukkah for New York

Manuscript Illustration of a Sukkah (Italy, 1374). British Libriary MS Or 5024 fol 70v from Metzger, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, fig. 369.

Sukkah meal. Amsterdam, 1722 by Bernard Picart

Design for Sukkah by Stanley Tigerman and Susan O'Brien , Chicago Booth Festival (Chicago: Spertus Museum, 1994), pg 32

A Sukkah Bound for New York

An ambitious compeititon is organized for Sukkahs to be built in Union Square in New York City. I've written about the sukkah and the competition in The Forward:

New Yorkers have gotten used to the celebration of Jewish holidays in public places. The 32-foot-tall Hanukkah menorah lit regularly at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza isn’t as tall as the spires of nearby churches (or hotels), but it is still a pretty assertive statement of Jewish presence and pride. Once the city opened the door to such displays of religious observance in a public space, we knew it wouldn’t be long before other celebrations followed. And in fact, it is the holiday of Sukkot that will be celebrated in a public space as “Sukkah City: New York City” — the brainchild of Joshua Foer — launches a design competition for innovative sukkahs (literally: booths), for which registration closes on July 1.

Traditionally, rabbis have discouraged building in public places in order to lessen the risk of unwanted intrusion or destruction. But Foer is using the competition process and public display to combine the explicit missions of the organizers — Union Square Partnership and Reboot — to improve “the district’s continued growth and success” while making Jewish “culture, rituals, and traditions we’ve inherited… vital and resonant in our own lives.”

Read my entire article in the The Forward about the sukkah and the competition here.

You can read more at the competition website here.

Original Intent: A student sukkah project harks back to architecture’s dawn

In time for the festival of Sukkot, here is my latest piece on Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life.

Original Intent

A student sukkah project harks back to architecture’s dawn

by Samuel D. Gruber

Nationwide, the Sukkot holiday, and the sukkah building type are undergoing something of a renaissance. Just as tent imagery captured the imagination of Jews building suburban synagogues in the 1960s, reflecting their continuing exodus from the “old neighborhoods,” so the simple form, temporary nature, and domestic setting of the humble sukkah strikes a sympathetic chord in the today’s enviro-friendly moment. The modest domestic and social rituals of Sukkot are especially appealing after the solemnity of the Days of Awe. The transition is a natural one: on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, synagogue-goers read of Jonah sitting in his sukkah overlooking Nineveh, and tradition calls for construction of the sukkah to begin the day after Yom Kippur.

A group of undergraduate architecture students at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, followed that tradition when they rebuilt the WesSukkah this week. (The sukkah was originally erected in the spring, when it won Faith and Form Magazine’s prestigious Sacred Landscape Award.) The sukkah was envisioned as something that could operate on both interpretive and physical levels. It had to satisfy a set of halakhic requirements, but it also had to interest and excite a young audience. The result is an undulating structure of five archways of skeletal-steel framing covered in bamboo mats, through which light penetrates to provide the needed view of the sky and stars—just one of several stipulations laid down in the Mishna and Talmud regarding the building of a sukkah.

Read the whole story here....

Poland: Sukkah from Szydłowiec Discovered and Restored

Poland: Sukkah from Szydłowiec Discovered and Restored

(ISJM) Just in time for this year’s celebration of the Sukkot holiday, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews – still in the planning and construction phase – has announced in its Newsletter that a sukkah dating from around 1920 discovered last year in the town of Szydłowiec on the porch of the house at 3 Garbarska Street has been dismantled, removed and is in restoration by conservators from the Radom Regional Museum.

The Sukkah was disassembled into its 240 original wooden parts for conservation and restoration. Monika and Norbert Bekiel, who own the house to which the sukkah was attached (remodeled into a porch) donated the structure to the Museum. Until the Museum of the History of Polish Jews is constructed, the sukkah will be kept at the Radom Area Countryside Museum.

Before World War II, the house where the sukkah was found belonged to Nuta Ajzenberg, who owned a local tannery. He was one of very few rich Jews in Szydłowiec. Next to his house Ajzenberg built a small synagogue used by his family and employees.

The donor, Monika Lukomska-Bekiel is reported as saying: “I am a teacher and I consider it my duty to teach the history and culture of Polish Jews. I know that the memory of the cultural and spiritual heritage shapes our national identity. After all, the cultural heritage of Polish Jews is also our heritage, their history is also our history”.

See photos of the dismantling of the sukkah here.

Read the story of the discovery and rescue of the sukkah