Sukkot holiday events must adapt after nor'easter knocks down sukkahs on Long Island

The nor'easter that hit Long Island over the weekend reminded residents of the overwhelming force of Mother Nature.

It also impacted the Jewish observance of Sukkot, a weeklong holiday that begins five days after Yom Kippur and honors the 40-year survival of Israelites in the desert following the exodus from Egypt. Modern-day observances are held in temporary tents, called sukkahs. And on Long Island, many were damaged or destroyed by the strong, gusting winds and pounding rain on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

In Commack, Rabbi Mendel Teldon, of the Chabad of Mid-Suffolk, said his congregation elected to disassemble its temporary sukkah, when forecasts of the storm's severity became clear. The 20x60-foot sukkah he erected in his own backyard in Smithtown came crashing down, he said, amid high winds on Saturday afternoon while he was standing inside of it, having a bite to eat.

"All of a sudden, I hear this swoosh of wind," he said. "The walls of the sukkah are waving. I say, 'That does not look good — and I run outside.' All of a sudden, the walls came caving in ... The damage, it was overwhelming. It was just a pile of stuff."

Teldon said Sabbath observances meant the sukkah couldn't be rebuilt over the weekend, but said congregation members, neighbors and friends came together on Sunday and Monday to rebuild the damaged sukkah ahead of observance-related events scheduled for the rest of the week.

"It was raining," he said. "We were putting it back together in the rain. It was person-to-person, community, coming together."

The roof of a 20x40-foot sukkah erected in the parking lot of the Plainview Jewish Center on Floral Drive West also came crashing down sometime Saturday overnight into Sunday, rendering the structure unusable for some Sukkot events.

"Our roof is made of bamboo mats, with a framework holding them in place, and when the wind really started blowing the support beams fell in, taking the roof with it," Rabbi Steven Conn said on Tuesday morning.

But, Conn said, considering the tents can be a symbolic reminder of survival through hardships, perhaps the collapse of the tents fit with the religious theme of the holiday.

"One message is an important message," he said. "That life is fragile and that the structures that we build in life are fragile, but we always have to be prepared for things that our out of our control — and, certainly, the weather is out of our control. The other message is that we find resilience, as well.

"We get knocked down — and then we build back up again."

Conn told Newsday the emergency repair was completed by Tuesday evening and the sukkah would be used for lunch on Wednesday.

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Rabbi Anchelle Perl at Chabad of Mineola said he and his congregation lost three sukkahs during the storm: one erected at the synagogue, one erected at his home and a third which his congregation had erected at NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island in Mineola.

"The wind blew down the sukkah at my home, the one at the synagogue lost half the roof — and then the one at the hospital blew into the street," Perl said. "We had flying sukkahs."

 But he added, "It's a good reminder that even though life may have a lot of shakes, what’s consistent above all those shakes is our faith in almighty God."