The great sukkah heist
When a hut moves on, it takes history with it
When a conversation in our family begins with “I have an idea, but it’s kooky talk,” our ears immediately perk up. We know it will be hilarious. It will be impossible, improbable, or at the very least extremely complicated. Part of the fun is predicting whether the idea actually will come to fruition or fall by the wayside.
I am proud to say that we have now added a Sukkot story to our kooky talk archives.
It began innocently enough.
On my way home from shul, Congregation Shomrei Emunah, on Shabbat Shuvah, I noticed a young woman walking in my direction. I recognized her because she read Torah that morning, in honor of the 25th anniversary of her becoming a bat mitzvah. We started chatting and discovered that in addition to being members of the same synagogue, we live on the same street, two blocks apart but in different towns.
I invited Rebecca to stop by for a few minutes.
We sat on the deck with my husband, Andy, and got acquainted. She moved to the area three years ago; we moved here 40 years ago. She and her husband are raising their two children in Glen Ridge; we raised our two children in Montclair. We have a sukkah and put it up for about 30 years; they borrowed a sukkah from the synagogue last year and returned it.
“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, as I started to hatch an idea. “Maybe Rebecca would like to borrow our sukkah, since it’s been lying dormant in our garage. The pandemic and invitations to other people’s sukkot, including our daughter Emily’s, in Philadelphia, have put our sukkah on hiatus.
A young family could give it new life and restore it to being the center of “z’man simchatenu” — our season of joy. Perfect!
And yet, as soon as the words spilled out of my mouth, Andy rolled his eyes and shook his head in doubt. You see, this is no pre-fab sukkah, with four metal poles, some tarp and bamboo. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Ours is a sukkah with plywood, cinder blocks, bricks, 2x4s, crossbeams, and a trellis. And did I mention history?
It is a family heirloom. When she was growing up, Emily painted a mural on each sukkah wall. As a little girl, she painted a holiday table with a kiddush cup and candles. Another year she painted a rabbi blowing a shofar. The murals became bigger and bolder as she matured. A golden wheat field shimmers in the sunlight and welcomes guests with Hebrew letters. A three-piece klezmer band has musical notes dancing in the night sky. If you listen carefully, you can hear the musicians playing a niggun. Inspired by a family trip to Israel, she painted the tayelet (promenade) in Tiberias.
Finally, there’s the family tree “planted” on a wall in 5757. Our names and Hebrew birthdays are painted on its leaves. Blank leaves are ready to welcome new names.
Andy was right. Why would Rebecca, a stranger I met three hours ago, want this very personal sukkah? It’s OUR family story, a quilt made of wood and paint. And even if she wanted this hand-me-down sukkah, how could she ever transport it to her house, though it’s only five minutes away?
“Can you open the garage and show me the sukkah?’ Rebecca asked tentatively. After a once-over, she concluded, “I’ll talk to my husband. He might know someone with a pick-up truck. Send me more pictures. We’ll get back to you.”
Was it possible that our new friend understood the kooky talk language?
In shul on Yom Kippur, Rebecca told us that she loved the one-of-a-kind sukkah and would be honored to accept it.
And the truck?
“Marvin, my husband, is working on it.”
On his way to work the next day, Marvin stopped by to examine the components of the sukkah. They were crammed in next to a garage wall and on a hard-to-reach shelf. Andy’s instructions on how to assemble it did not intimidate him; he loved the challenge.
And what about the truck? Still a work in progress.
After an exciting exchange of photos and about 20 texts, we learned that Ron, Marvin’s friend with a pick-up truck, was available the following night.
At 9:05 p.m., we received a text, “We’re here.”
The sukkah heist had begun.
A guy we never met and a guy we met 24 hours earlier backed into our driveway in a giant black pickup truck. A full moon and the glaring lights of the truck brightened the otherwise dark sky. I noticed Marvin’s gloves sticking out of his back pocket. Was he worried about leaving fingerprints, or did he just not want splinters?
In 15 minutes they loaded the cinderblocks, 2x4s, and crossbeams into the truck. The wood pieces were so long that they jutted out like cannons. The sukkah was on its way!
Then, after unloading the first set of materials in the backyard shed, Ron and Marvin returned to the original site. With Andy as their accomplice, they stealthily placed the trellis, string lights, and plywood walls into the truck, making sure not to damage the precious murals. The truck departed from our house at 10:05 p.m. By 10:30, the operation was complete.
All right, so maybe it wasn’t exactly a heist. But it sure felt like one. The gang worked at night. It had a mastermind, a wheelman, a getaway vehicle, and accomplices. The crew wasn’t stealing Renaissance paintings from the Louvre or an Italian museum. Instead, it was transporting a holiday, with all its memories, from one family to the next.
Some people say that a great idea starts with a dream. In our family, it often starts with kooky talk. Not only did Rebecca and Marvin understand kooky talk but they also understood l’dor vador — from generation to generation.
So when they gratefully took our hand-me-down sukkah, we knew they would honor our traditions and add their own. How lucky we are to be invited to share in the magic and the mitzvah of sitting in their sukkah anytime.
Merrill Silver and her husband live in Montclair; she’s a freelance writer and retired ESL teacher. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Hadassah magazine, the Forward, the New York Jewish Week, and other publications. Find her at merrillsilver.wordpress.com