Day 1011

Soda crate sukkah

October 6th, 2014



Perhaps this family in Midwood/Flatlands got the idea from a Crown Heights rabbi. From the NY Times, a decade ago:

Rabbi Berl Haskelevich, 58, is no environmentalist. A cabala scholar, he can barely keep his recyclables straight. But this time of the year, he reuses several hundred plastic Coca-Cola crates to make a sleek red hut on the front porch of his brick house in Brooklyn.

Fitting the cases neatly together like Lego pieces to form solid plastic walls, he builds his sukkah, the makeshift structure that many Jews use to celebrate Sukkot, the weeklong holiday of the harvest . . .

"What can I say? I drink a lot of Coke," said Rabbi Haskelevich, standing on the front porch of his house on Montgomery Street in Crown Heights, where many of the stately brick homes have sukkot (the plural of sukkah) on front porches and balconies. The rabbi had accumulated many Coke cases, and the youngest of his nine children first suggested using them as sukkah building blocks.

"It's my third year using them," he explained. "They don't get rotten like wood. It's sturdy, and it looks beautiful. I get a lot of compliments."
(Note the eruv string attached to the post at the corner of the sukkah.)


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