Our Very First Succah

I once had a rabbi in Sem originally from Brooklyn who told us that the day he woke up in his balcony succah, with an icicle on his nose, was the day he decided to make aliyah.  Clearly mitzvot are designed to be done in Israel, you can’t argue with that one.  Anyhow for years our family succah fare has been based around one-pot foods, whereby originally if your succah was at the bottom of your garden you didn’t have to make too many trips in and out.  Of course this really meant that you could eat your dinner quickly, then run off and seek cover, before you either froze to death or the rain topped up your soup.  Naturally I was rather excited to be sitting in our lovely succah at such a glorious time of year, sunny but not too hot.  Only it has been so ridiculously hot here, that at 35 degrees its the same problem as England.  Eat, and run inside to the aircon.  Shame that.

Our succah building experience was great fun.  After nearly being ripped off by some dodgy blokes selling succahs outside home centre – they wanted 927 shekel for a very basic succah, (albeit with nice pictures of the ushpizin on the cloth), I decided to wait on it and seek local advice.

“But it comes with a guarantee” they assured me.

“Why on earth would I need that??” I reply. “It’s not like it’s going to rain! Now England,” I said knowingly, that’s where you need a guarantee.”

Then I explained how one year we had a big hurricane in the middle of the night and friends of ours ended up withn 4 succahs in their garden.  Loud guffaws at that one.

Thanks to my fabulous neighbour, who donated bits of his old succah and drove me around every B&Q equivalent in Karmiel in search of the rest of it, we now have a beautiful big succah. 🙂 Husband, our good friend and our neighbour put in a team effort.  It even has a 24-hour LED lamp and artwork kindly donated by Jojo (with a little help from my friend). Confident in the reliable Israeli weather, and the heatwave, we didn’t bother wrapping anything up (most refreshing after years of covering pictures in freezer bags and finding other ingenius ways of preserving succah decorations).  After friday night dinner we just cleared the table and retired to the sofas.

Of course, you can guess what happened next can’t you?

It rained.