Jewish students carry out Sukkot traditions with campus community

When Josh Goldman saw students poking the canvas of his man-made hut behind Commons Building 2, he invited them inside, realizing how strange this 8-by-10 foot bamboo-roofed, tentlike structure appeared to most onlookers.

After checking out the plush grass floor, high-strung blue bulb lighting and walls adorned with homemade drawings, the curious students had only one word — "Pimpin'."

Goldman, a junior accounting major, built a "sukkah" for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which commemorates the huts the Jews built in the desert when they left Egypt in the 14th century B.C.

The seven-day autumn holiday calls on Jews to build a temporary dwelling that basically becomes their home for the week.

There are nine sukkahs located on and around the campus, including at the Hillel Center, outside of Commons, at Chabad Student Center on Hopkins Avenue, at the Alpha Epsilon Pi satellite house and at other private residences.

While they are technically required to eat and sleep in the sukkah, few students choose the primitive huts over their "luxurious" campus facilities.

"It's just too cold outside," Ilana Libby, a freshman psychology major, said as she ate her breakfast inside the Hillel dining hall.

Some take the custom to more extreme degrees. Noah Goldman, a senior physics and astronomy major, sleeps in the sukkah for most of the holiday. "My roommates barely see me during Sukkot," Goldman said. "You're supposed to make the sukkah your home, which means that everything you do in your home you should do in the sukkah."

For him, that includes eating, sleeping and studying. Goldman said if he's not in the Physics Building, he's probably in the sukkah at Hillel.

In a less traditional display of Sukkot, Yossi Bryski came from New York to help Chabad, a Jewish outreach organization, spread the Sukkot traditions on the go with a sukkah-on-wheels.

"If they can't make it to the sukkah, you bring the sukkah to them," he said. The mobile sukkah has been spotted everywhere from Wawa to the campus dining halls and has drawn hundreds of Jewish students in for quick blessings and free meals.

As for the curious non-Jews, Bryski says most have been respectful of the hut and traditions once he explains them. He'll even let you shake the Lulav and Etrog, a myrtle branch and lemonlike fruit which symbolize the joining of the Jewish heart, mind and body, so you don't feel left out.

To round out the recent string of Jewish holidays, Jews celebrate Simchat Torah Wednesday, marking the end of the yearly cycle of reading the Torah. It's a time for the Jewish community to unite and reach new spiritual awakenings, but some students see the holiday as a reason to get drunk.

Some students believe drinking makes it easier to achieve a spiritual high while they're celebrating and rejoicing with the sacred Torah scrolls.

Other members of the community disagree.

About 85 to 90 percent of Orthodox Jews will drink on the holiday, Judah Fuld, junior economics major estimated.

"I think in most communities it's condoned," Fuld said, "but it's condoned because it's thought to be drinking for a higher purpose, but in actuality it's not."

Rabbi Ari Israel, Hillel's executive director, sees Simchat Torah as a "way to celebrate our devotion to the Torah and to come together as a community," and added, "I would rather people celebrate the holiday out of a spiritual quest than to use a vice that masks the reality of the holiday."

Hillel has a strict alcohol policy and doesn't condone drinking in general. Letters sent out to community leaders explained Torah scrolls will not be handled by anyone who seems intoxicated, drinking is prohibited in and around Hillel, and alcohol will be confiscated if it's discovered.

Sober or not, the night promises a good time with friends, ample singing and seven rounds of dancing.

After a week of hut-living, four days of missed classes and one night of frivolity and dancing, it's back to the old routine, but you can't help but wonder, where are all the "Jews Have More Fun" T-shirts?