The Sukkot Tent

 

The cool evenings that suggest a change of season harken in the fall. Pumpkin carving, apple picking and stomping through multi-covered leaves on the way to school, are all Autumn traditions. Cooking again seems like a novel thing to do, as old spices are disposed of and new batches are purchased. Concord grapes freshly picked from the vine are greedily eaten or cooked and sealed in Mason jars turning them into a delicious jelly to sweeten the long winter ahead. Winter pears are harvested and made into pear stew. Apple delicacies are a seasonal favorite, and the scintillating smell of freshly baked apple pie is irresistible.

A Protestant carpenter, a Catholic carpenter and a Jewish Rabbi walk into a SUKKOT Tent. No, this is not the beginning of an ethnic joke conceived in poor taste for cheap laughs, preying on the prejudices of the audience and at the expense of one of the characters, parading thinly veiled racism as humor, but merely my remembrances of my first weeks in the Carpenters Shop at NYU Medical Center. The Rabbi had come to inspect the annual autumnal construction of the tent for the holiday of SUKKOT. He spoke to George, my senior partner, and left soon after, seemingly pleased with their plan. The setting for our tent was a quiet section of the Gimbel Garden, the funds for which had been donated many years before by the Gimbel family of department store fame. The garden was a quiet enclave of lush green flowering plants and shade trees with comfortable benches that were accessed from The Rusk Institute where patients and visitors to the hospital would come for a respite before or after a session of physical therapy while goldfish, turtles and tadpoles meandered through the marble pond silently enjoying their swim as brightly colored parrots  sat in large golden bird cages, never trying to escape and seemingly well aware that they had an excellent situation.

George was a tall stoic Scottish carpenter who had come to America and accepted this job at the hospital. He was an exceptional journeyman and had specialized in finishing woodwork on passenger ships. The interior of ships built in Scotland, like most ships of the time had few straight level lines but were instead an endless collection of radiuses and curves. In addition, George worked with hard woods which were expensive, and precision with attention to detail was imperative to avoid wasting material and staying in the good graces of the Foreman to stay employed. He was well over six feet tall with grey hair and black eyebrows, and he rarely smiled. Like Atlas, he carried his tall lank frame around as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders. Although severe in his demeanor George was a kind man, as long as he was not crossed. He tried to teach me from his vast knowledge of skills. I had been paired with him to essentially do the bull work, preparing the materials he needed, such as lifting steel doors onto A-frames, or moving heavy lumber or plywood into position. Today we had a lighter assignment in having constructed the SUKKOT Tent for the Jewish holiday of that name. The tent was constructed out of long aluminum poles which fit into junctions and were held together with thick Allen screws forming a large rectangular shape. A heavy dark blue canvas cloth wrapped around the inside of these poles sliding down through gussets in the canvas over the top of each vertical pole and dropping down about six inches until they reached horizontal poles. Silvery writing in Hebrew and pictures of the harvest were inscribed on the interior side of the canvas. The tent was about twelve feet wide by thirty feet long and the top was open to the sky. The Rabbi had explained that it was necessary to be able to see the stars of the night sky when one looked up. Stalks of bamboo, about thirteen feet in length, were placed across the width of the tent about three inches apart and extending a few inches over each side of the tent . I later found out that this tent represented both a harvest feast, thanking God for the harvest’s bounty, and was also a rustic remembrance of the time spent in the desert. One of the last steps when our work was almost completed was to install a board attached perpendicularly to the ceiling joists for the electricians to add a long fluorescent light that they secured with screws running the extension cord to an exterior garden outlet. I called them to come when we had everything prepared. After the Electricians were done, Environmental Services were summoned to supply long wooden folding tables and chairs. This portable furniture was used all over the hospital for various occasions. Next came the Pastoral Office who sent people to decorate with shiny tinsel like representations of fruits and vegetables and other geometric designs, that hung down from the joists and bamboo. Lastly the Catering Department would supply hot coffee and tea urns and food on each day of observance. When the holiday ended about a week later, we returned to disassemble the structure and pack everything away for the next year.

The following year George and I worked together again constructing the tent but I took a more active role in the construction and when the Rabbi came for his inspection, George referred him to me. I conversed with him and later made the requested alterations. That was the last year that George and I worked together on the tent as his health seemed to be failing. The following year I had been given a new partner to help me.

As the years rolled by Rabbis came and went. There were tall Rabbis and short Rabbis, young Rabbis and old Rabbis, fat Rabbis and skinny Rabbis, serious Rabbis like George, and jovial light-hearted Rabbis. Each man had a slightly different interpretation as to how the tent should be constructed or modified. Their requests were always treated with respect and adopted if practical.  One Rabbi noted that it was difficult for visitors in wheelchairs to enter the tent with the impediment of the pole that ran across the threshold. To solve this problem, I built a shallow ramp with a notch on the bottom to straddle the pipe so that the wheelchairs could roll over it unimpeded. The Rabbi approved of my solution, and I saved the ramp with the tent for future use after the holiday was over. There were a few occasions when a Rabbi whom I was not familiar with would stop by and make suggestions for an alteration. After implementation, I had learned that he was visiting a patient and was not affiliated with the hospital, and therefore did not have the authority to give me any instructions at all. From then on, I politely asked for credentials before making any changes.

One year before the holiday, the foreman asked me to meet a truck on First Avenue that was delivering a new tent. I went over there and saw a medium sized white truck with the name Sukkah Depot emblazoned on the side of it. Out of the cab jumped a group of young men neatly dressed in traditional garb who quickly loaded the boxes onto my wagon as well as their own cart and helped me bring the new tent to where it was to be constructed. This tent was a modern modular design made of aluminum frames with grey Formica on the outside and wood grained Formica on the interior. The sections locked into one another creating a very sleek modern style. The tent even had a window and a double door to enter! The men explained that it was designed with brackets to accept wooden 2’x4’s around the perimeter at the top with additional brackets for joists to run the width of the tent. This was definitely an improvement over the old canvas tent.

One day while the tent was being set up, a young maintenance man came along and introduced himself as Eyal. He was a Moroccan Jew and he asked if I could save him some small task to perform before it was completed. Eyal explained that it would be a good mitzvah for him. I wasn’t familiar with the term but it wasn’t every day that someone offered to help you do your work, so I promised to call him. As we were finishing up and putting in the cross braces, I called Eyal on the shortwave radio, who was very appreciative for the call, and he came right away to help. I supplied EYAL with a screw gun which he used to screw in the last cross braces while thanking me profusely for remembering his request.

A few years later Eyal joined the Carpenters Shop and each year he and I installed the SUKKOT Tent together. When I was retiring Eyal was now the lead carpenter for installation of the tent, and he had his own helper. Construction of the tent was a good mitzvah for him, and it seemed appropriate to me that a Jewish carpenter was installing the tent as this task was more than just a work assignment.

To all those who are celebrating this upcoming holiday, please enjoy it!

 

Jim

October 2022