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Jewish World Review Oct. 2, 1998 / 12 Tishrei, 5759
Decorating gives a sukkah its own individual style
WHAT DOES YOUR SUKKAH say about you? Like a more permanent home, a sukkah,
to some extent, reflects its owners. While financial considerations may dictate
a larger or smaller abode, or finer or rougher materials, there’s plenty you
can do to personalize even the plainest structure.
Many families really enjoy the “back-to-nature” aspect of the holiday. You
can tell these people by their
(When the cashier at the supermarket comments on your eating habits, you
know you’ve gone overboard.)
Some families deplore wasting food. They are more likely to festoon their
roof with plastic fruits and vegetables. Hanging New Year’s cards gives these
greetings a new life and displays evidence of a rich social network without
creating still more waste.
Like the refrigerator of a family with preschoolers, the sukkah of a family
with young children often is plastered with crayoned and painted pictures of
(occasionally recognizable) Sukkot scenes and symbols. Paper chains made in
Jewish nursery school hang from the rafters, at least until the first hard
rain.
Some folks are strictly no-fuss. They want a manufactured sukkah that
requires little time and effort to put together. If canvas walls come printed with a
few Sukkos images and words in Hebrew, that’s good enough for them. If the
walls come without decorations, a couple of Sukkos posters from a Jewish
bookstore will fill the bill.
There are people who use their sukkah to express aspects of their
personalities that normally remain under wraps. A person who would shy away
from anything gaudy or ungepatchkaed (eclectic taken beyond the limits of good
taste) in a year-round home may find the very tackiness of tinsel and
strings of colored lights most appealing in a sukkah. (One woman I know refuses to
hang a painting her husband brought to the marriage inside their house, but
she is perfectly content to display it in their sukkah.)
Some families use their decorations to reaffirm religious principle. In
addition to a poster featuring the traditional ushpizin (seven historical
“guests” invited into the sukkah), their sukkah walls might spotlight
contemporary religious figures worthy of admiration and emulation, or show
their love of Israel. Other posters may show the brachos (blessings) to be
recited in a sukkah.
Just as some formal living rooms almost scream “Don’t touch,” some sukkos
seem more for show than comfort. A family that goes into a sukkah for just a few
minutes to say kiddush may not mind the dozens of yellow jackets attracted
to beautifully strung cranberries.
Others, in keeping with the Jewish law that a sukkah mustliterally be like your home, provide almost all the comfort of indoors. Real furniture and
Oriental carpets provide a sense of luxury, but it only works if the people don’t get
uptight about “what if....”
Other people equally concerned about esthetics see the practical problems of
decorating a sukkah as a design challenge. This kind of person will check
out linen sales all year round in search of inexpensive sheets in a floral or
trellis pattern to make a theme-appropriate “wallpaper.” Silver candlesticks
will stay inside; import-store hurricane lanterns or votive holders will
come outside. The table won’t sport damask, but one of the new generation of
attractive vinyl tablecloths purchased to coordinate with the dishes. The
look is sometimes less than formal, but the person who must set a pretty table in
the dining room will do it here, too.
Chances are that your sukkah and its decorating will change over the years.
My husband has been working the past few nights on a system to increase our
sukkah’s square footage. Over the years, I have accumulated some “finds” and
retired the tinsel. Some of my daughter’s less enduring masterpieces are
gone.
We're tired of scrambling into the house with our upholstered dining chairs at
the first sprinkle and bought cheap folding chairs at an office supply
outlet.
They’re not very attractive, though, and I’ve been thinking about ways to
jazz them up.
Potomac, Md. resident Susan Levin is the founder of Succat Shalom, a firm that
sells sukkah kits of her own design. (The business grew out of requests from
friends and family members who asked if she could make them a sukkah kit
like
the one she created for her own family.) One of the things that Levin enjoys
about the business is that she often has the opportunity to see the kits set
up and decorated. They may start out the same, she told Washington Jewish
Week, but they never stay that way. Each seems to be as unique as the family
that lives in it.
Most need to be laminated or covered in clear plastic to weather a week. But
don’t overlook other sources. A favorite photo of Israel, for example, can
be
blown up to poster size.
• Laminate your children’s art. Make the plastic go beyond the picture; when
you punch a hole through the plastic only, the rain can’t work its way into
the art itself.
• You can use a thin clothesline and colorful clips or clothespins to
display
Rosh Hashanah cards, postcards or photos.
• Consider a wind chime or light catcher. Some local Judaica stores are
selling a wind chime with stars of David.
• In addition to your local supermarket, consider a farm market or nearby
orchard or pumpkin farm for living decorations. These outlets often have a
good selection of ornamental vegetables. There’s one kind of squash that
actually looks like a swan; it would make a graceful centerpiece. Lacquered
gourds will remain fresh throughout the holiday.
• Foods can be hung in several ways. With a strong needle and sometimes a
pair
of pliers, you can thread your yarn through the flesh of the fruit or
vegetable. It looks good but tends to attract insects. You can choose pieces
with stems to which you can tie your yarn. Sometimes the fruit slips out of
its tie, though; you don’t want to be sitting underneath at the time.
Inexpensive netting in pale shades (available at craft and fabric stores)
can
be fashioned into a cradle for one or more pieces.
• Craft stores sell lots of plastic and fabric fruit, vegetables and
greenery.
By mixing real fruits with the best of the phony stuff, you may be able to
fool your guests while disappointing the wasps.
• Paper chains are easy to make, but children are disappointed when they
don’t
last. Popcorn also dissolves in the rain, and more kernels get eaten than
strung, you’ll notice. Equally easy are chains made of polystyrene peanuts
used for wrapping fragile items. They’re either free or very cheap, can be
pierced easily with a blunt needle and look good no matter how irregularly
they’re threaded. Dip them in paint, or daub them for more eye appeal.
• Create a “window” to take advantage of a nice view. A window box outside
adds a nice touch.
• Some stores are beginning to stock Christmas decorations. If you choose
carefully, no one will know the original purpose for that ornament.
• Walk around a close-out store with your eyes wide open. Don’t think of
what
something was made for; think what it could become with some ingenuity.
• No matter how nice your sukkah looks, people will want to desert it if the
bugs take up shop. Some stores sell yellow-jacket baits, but you can make
your
own and leave them a few yards away from the sukkah. Take a long narrow jar.
Pierce a hole or two in the cover with the sharp end of a bottle opener. In
the bottom of the jar put some honey and a small piece of meat. The yellow
jackets fly in but can’t get out.
• Put safety high on your agenda. Space often is tight in a sukkah, and
things do get bumped and knocked over. Be especially careful about candle
placement, and consider special arrangements to prevent a
At home in an 8-day house
By Deborah Cymrot
shopping carts, piled high with multi-hued Indian
corn, gourds prized for their bizarre shapes, bags of fragrant apples,
oranges and cranberries, sacks of onions and garlic, colorful peppers and exotic
varieties of produce that the owners wouldn’t begin to know how to prepare.
LOW-COST DECORATING IDEAS
• Judaica shops usually sell a variety of posters, some especially for
Sukkot.
Deborah Cymrot is the Community Editor at the Washington Jewish Week.
