Have Sukkah, Will Travel!

Hello dear readers,

If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know that I love to travel. Sometimes I will travel for work, and sometimes just for fun, but either way I’ve always found it important to have a small travel suitcase ready to go. Inside I have the essentials packed: clothes for three days, three pairs of shoes, toiletries. Sometimes my hectic job will mean that I only have a day or two of notice before I have to be on a plane (though thankfully that’s been rarer and rarer in recent years), so I’ve taken to saying something along the lines of, “Have suitcase, will travel!”

It’s a phrase I tend to like, especially since it’s easily adaptable. In the past I’ve written blog posts like, “Have lulav and etrog, will travel!” and, “Have afikoman, will travel!,” and “Have shofar, will travel!” The common thread, of course, is that these are all small(ish) items that travel well and that if you take the item with you, you’ll be ready to do whatever you need to do, wherever the journey takes you. Take the item and go! But the other day I was looking through some family photos, and I saw something that made me reflexively go to this expression, even if the logic doesn’t make total sense at first blush. Okay, ready?

“Have sukkah, will travel!”

I know, right? It’s weird, isn’t it? How can you have a sukkah and travel with it?

The answer is that in the background of a photo, which was taken on the streets of New York about three years ago, I saw a mobile sukkah! In this case, it was a sukkah on the back of a truck, motoring around the streets of Manhattan. These mobile sukkahs look a little funny amid the yellow cabs and black limos and various other vehicles roving the streets of New York, but they’re also important to help people fulfill the mitzvah of the sukkah, especially for those who live in apartments who may not have a sukkah in the building. (I remember living in a tiny New York apartment for one year, and I do wish that I had a sukkah mobile during Chol Hamoed). More recently, I’ve even seen a mobile sukkah on the back of a bicycle, almost like a rickshaw, that does the same thing and offers the same kind of portable mitzvah fulfillment.

So, I guess sometimes you will travel to the sukkah (like going on a kosher sukkot vacation), and sometimes the sukkah will travel to you! Maybe the phrase should be, “Have Sukkot, the sukkah will travel!”

More soon,

Ariella

If you don’t have a mobile sukkah, that doesn’t mean you can’t travel! Contact Leisure Time Tours at 718-528-0700 for more information.