Sukkah’s redesign sheds new light on festival

“Sukkah City,” a film documenting a competition of innovative sukkot, will be shown in Manhattan this Sunday, Sept. 22, at the the site of the original display of the sukkot in Union Square Park.

The film begins as a jury considers the more than 600 international design submissions in the contest originated by author Joshua Foer and Roger Bennett, co-chairman of the Jewish cultural organization Reboot.

In the movie, Foer points out that only a tiny fraction of American Jews erect sukkahs, and his competition was designed to jumpstart a rethinking of the tradition and to “tap the tremendous creative potential in the sukkah.”

The panel of architect-jurors and the contestants were briefed on the halachic (Jewish legal) requirements of a kosher sukkah — its structure, walls, dimensions and materials including the schach (naturally grown and harvested material for the roof). A rabbi from Yeshiva Chovevei Torah (Rabbi Avi Weiss’ academy in Riverdale) was the consultant and ruled that they were kosher except for needing additional schach.

Twelve designs were chosen and each contestant was given $10,000 and ten days to produce their sukkah and bring it by forklift and flatbed truck to the exhibition site and assemble it there. More than 200,000 people viewed the structures over the two-day period, Orthodox Jews, secular Jews and non-Jews.

The film concludes with Mayor Bloomberg presenting the winner, the entry entitled “Fractured Bubble,” a circular structure split in three, pierced by sheaves of long grass harvested in Queens, looking like an enormous chestnut in its husk.

Jason Hutt, the film’s producer/director, cited the two-day presentation in Union Square Park as a “unique moment in the contemporary American Jewish experience,” and a “portrait of this incredibly innovative design project,” in an email exchange with The Jewish Star. The film debuted at the Jerusalem International Film Festival and was shown at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

“I think the exhibition, and the film, definitely shows the untapped potential for the sukkah — creatively, experientially and spiritually — for those who put one up every year, and for those who don’t. And many of the people who visited the exhibition found these structures and the event inspiring.” He said that he lives in a second floor apartment and has no space to build a sukkah.

Overall, the viewer witnesses a creative process and the intellectual acceptance of the Torah guidelines for the task at hand, the building of a Jewish legally mandated temporary structure accomplished annually by Jews over the millennia. In secular circles and in non-Jewish circles in areas with little or no Jewish connection, the holiday of Sukkot is hardly known and certainly not acknowledged. Watching secular Jews and non-Jews seriously contemplating and striving to tackle the concepts and realities of this commandment and doing so in a very public forum appears to be a Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of G-d’s name).

Hutt continues: “What I love about Judaism, and why I think it remains vibrant after thousands of years, is that it has the strength and flexibility for interpretation and re-interpretation. From generation to generation, the tradition allows Jews to discover meanings for themselves through life experience and intellectual investigation and it resonates in different ways, at different times, for different people.

“Joshua Foer realized that there was tremendous creative potential in the sukkah and believed that a competition and exhibition could breathe new life into the structure and spark renewed interest in the holiday and the meanings surrounding it. And for me, the project promised to be an innovative and original undertaking and therefore an exciting documentary film.

“In a sense, the film provides audiences with a more comprehensive understanding of “Sukkah City” than the exhibition did — the architects share the stories behind their designs, the audience sees how and why the winning structures were chosen; as well as the labor that went into their construction.

“I greatly enjoyed making this film and my hope is that audiences will feel inspired, excited and energized by the creative process of the architects; the vision and ambition of the project’s planners, and the singularity of this moment in contemporary American Jewish life.”

The film will be shown Sept. 22, 7 pm, at Union Square-North Plaza. For more information go to oxbowlakefilms.com/sukkahcity/