38 | OCTOBER 17 • 2024

M

any readers of the Detroit
Jewish News who build
sukkot in celebration of the
holiday live in detached homes with
ample yard space for constructing the
temporary hut.
During the years that I lived in
Southfield, my family built a large suk-
kah on our backyard deck. However,
for observant Jews living in urban
apartments, finding a location for
building a sukkah can be challenging.
One year when I was a toddler, my
family lived in an apartment in Boston.
My parents decided that their best

option was to build a sukkah on the
roof of their building. It stood there
until, halfway through the holiday, the
trumpeting of a fierce
New England storm sent
the walls tumbling down
to the street.
For many religiously
observant urbanites in
Israel, where apartment
buildings dominate the
landscape, the holiday
of Sukkot brings with it this question
of where to construct a sukkah. As
apartment buildings and urban density

rise, the problem becomes more acute,
with limited space on the ground and
on the roof of buildings. While the
importance of balconies has univer-
sally grown more pronounced since
the COVID-19 pandemic, in Israel the
holiday of Sukkot, as well as a quirk in
the building code, has made balcony
design an especially important feature
of many apartment buildings.

RULES OF BUILDING A SUKKAH
The sukkot we build commemorate
the nomadic period that the Israelites
spent in the desert following the
Exodus. The basic mitzvah of a suk-
kah, as per Leviticus 23:42, is to “live
in sukkot for seven days.
” Jewish law
therefore establishes several minimum
requirements for a sukkah that render
it habitable. These include a minimum
area and height, as well as at least
two-and-a-half walls. However, there
is another crucial component, hinted
at by the word “sukkah” itself, which
relates to covering. The sukkah must
be roofed with organic material, gener-
ically called sechach, which must be the
only thing covering the sukkah. It is
not enough for the sukkah to be out-
side and thatched with sechach; it must
sit under the heavens and not under a
tree, overhang or built enclosure.
This requirement may not have been
problematic when most Jews lived
in an agrarian setting, though even
in ancient Judaea, the rabbis of the
Mishnah considered and rejected the
possibility of a double-decker sukkah.
In the suburbs of Detroit, where
most houses have lawns or courtyards
that are open to the sky, it is less of an
obstacle, though one must still watch
out for overhanging trees. (I remem-
ber this being an issue at Hillel when
I was a student at the University of
Michigan.) However, apartment build-
ings are another matter. Because suk-
kot need to sit under the open sky, it is
not enough for a unit to simply have a
balcony; typical apartment buildings
stack balconies one over another, so
that all but the uppermost one are cov-
ered. This has resulted in some apart-
ment dwellers in Israel jerry-rigging
platforms and jutting makeshift ledges
from their balconies, seemingly held
together by duct tape and prayers.

To create an apartment building
with deliberate “sukkah balconies”
open to the sky, the balconies must be
staggered, and the perimeter space of
the building must be divided so that
all apartments have a slice. Setbacks,
like tiers on a wedding cake, can make
more space available for sukkah balco-
nies, but at the expense of apartment
size, and at a certain height the reduced
floor plan makes this unfeasible. In an
effort to assure at least some exposure,
building projects might guarantee a
rather paltry area that can accommo-
date a kosher sukkah, in the range of
15 square feet. This, too, can lead to
diminishing results and sukkot that
can only accommodate a few people
around a small table, and not the large
family gatherings that are typical of
holiday meals in Israel.
Ensuring that there are even small
sukkah balconies complicates the
apartment plan and is only done when
consumers demand such a feature,
primarily in neighborhoods slated for
religious clientele.

ECONOMICS OF CONSTRUCTION
This balcony design challenge is strict-
ly a Jewish concern, but it mirrors his-
toric problems for all tall buildings. As
the price of land in cities rose, devel-
opers sought to generate additional
value by building taller structures.
But by the time Louis Sullivan and
Dankmar Adler — the son of Detroit
Temple Beth El’s Rabbi Liebman Adler
— were helping to pioneer the first
metal-frame skyscrapers in Chicago,
architects were confronting a problem
of diminishing returns.
As masonry skyscrapers grew taller,
their walls needed to grow thicker,
and increasingly large banks of eleva-
tors and stairs were necessary. These
requirements ate up the valuable retail
space on ground floors, and thus can-
celed out any added value provided
by additional floors above. Similarly,
as buildings grew taller, they limited
access to sunlight that renters demand-
ed in offices and dwellings. Steel
frames and electric lighting helped
solve these problems and make the
skyscrapers profitable. The desire for
sukkah balconies deals with these same
issues but cannot be solved as readily.

Sukkot in
Jerusalem

Israeli apartment dwellers want balconies

that accommodate a sukkah.

Joshia Skarf
Special to the
Jewish News

SUKKOT