Photo of the four minim courtesy of Israel's Government Press Office
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This year, like almost every other, I did not build a sukkah. I’ve long wanted to, but it just never happened. Now that I am in a new home, perhaps next year we could build one.
But that’s not to say I don’t have memories of them. When I was a child, the sukkah was something that belonged to the shul and during Hebrew school, we’d trudge inside to recite the blessing over the lulav and etrog. I didn’t feel all that connected, I admit.
When my Israeli ex-husband built one at my parents’ house on Long Island, though, he creatively used two-by-fours for the frame and old bedsheets for the siding (I bet ours was the only one in existence with Huckleberry Hound on the walls!). Our neighbor Sam, two doors down, came by once he saw it up, and told us how he had grown up with his family building one, and this brought back memories. He was thrilled and ran home to get wine for a kiddush. His wife was a little less thrilled at him taking the Waterford crystal decanter, I recall. But boy, was he smiling.
When I lived in Jerusalem, it was far from a rarity. I just loved how neighborhoods were filled with sukkot everywhere, beneath buildings, on balconies, in the yards in front and back. And how some children would sleep out in them with their fathers. It was an adventure! I also remember eating holiday dinner in my former in-laws’ sukkah in Katamon Tet and then in my neighbors’ in Givat Mordechai, and hearing everyone else around them enjoy their dinner too. One of a former sister-in-law’s neighbors had rigged a pulley and a pail from his third floor apartment to a tree below to make it easier to bring the food down and the empty dishes back up. Sheer brilliance! While that was uniquely urban, hearing the clinks and clatter of silverware touching plates and conversations and singing at other families’ tables near us felt absolutely communal. In a way, this is what it must have been like for Am Yisrael as they traveled through the desert for 40 years.
Then again, I also remember going to visit a former sister-in-law in Ma’ale Livonah and seeing how her then husband had moved the couch and television into their sukkah. If the commandment is to live in it for seven days, then by gum, that’s what he was going to do!
Decorating the sukkot was always fun too. Once time, my sons and I were invited to my boss’s sukkah for holiday dinner and we decided to make a decoration as a present. We took a big piece of newsprint and painted it yellow, folding it into a paper balloon (one of the more useful things I had learned in fourth grade!) and attaching it to a branch. The etrog was big and beautiful, I thought. So did the boys. I also have kept all the decorations my older two sons “made” in Gan Itri in Talpiyyot, the religious nursery school they went to. I’d always hoped I would build a sukkah and hang these on the walls.
After I moved back to the states, while I was thrilled to know families in metro Atlanta were building their own sukkot, I never built my own. (and not all had kits – one family used PVC one year, and I even downloaded blueprints and filed them away for someday…) Sadly, it was always “next year” that I would build.
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This year is no different. This week, I moved into my fiancé’s house and between work, school, homework, unpacking and each of our separate work-related travel plans, it just isn’t going to be. But as I look around and see a house empty of kids, with each of our youngest now off to college, I wonder how I let the years go by without creating those memories for my own kids that I saw neighbors and friends give theirs.
We all have regrets in life and this is actually one of mine. I have to admit, though, that I am grateful that I do not have bigger regrets weighing me down. And next year – please hold me to it – we will build a sukkah!
Doireann Garrihy is the presenter as Podge & Rodge return to RTÉ.
Doireann Garrihy is the presenter as Podge & Rodge return to RTÉ.
RTÉ HAS ANNOUNCED the details of its autumn season of programming, with director-general Dee Forbes declaring the line-up as a “statement of intent” by the broadcaster.
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Included in its already confirmed schedule are a number of new drama series, factual programming and some old and new comedy programming.
RTÉ is to provide greater details on the programmes at a launch later this afternoon, but this is what we know so far about what’s in store over the coming months.
Drama
The broadcaster has singled out a new drama from the team behind Love/Hate as something to watch out for. Taken Down said to be a detective drama in which the central character “investigates the death of a young Nigerian immigrant found abandoned close to a Direct Provision Centre”.
Love/Hate director Stephen Carolan is among those behind the show with Brian Gleeson starring alongside Senegalese-born French actress Aissa Maiga.
After the successful Easter Rising drama Rebellion, RTÉ returns to the nation’s birth with War of Independence drama Resistance, Gleeson is again a cast member.
Northern Ireland is also portrayed in on RTÉ screens with a number of programmes, one called Death and Nightingales set in the 1880s and a Troubles drama set in the aftermath of the IRA’s Warrington bombing called Mother’s Day.
Comedy and entertainment
RTÉ has revealed that a number of comedy programmes are making a return, with Podge and Rodge back on our screens and Bridget & Eamon also getting another run.
Amy Huberman is set to front a new comedy series called Finding Joy which also features Aisling Bea and Laura Whitmore.
The ever-popular Dancing with the Starsis also back for third season but there is no indication yet who’ll be taking to the dance floor.
Who we are
RTÉ says that it will be celebrating Irish identity as part of the programming with a number of shows focusing on our relationship with Britain.
Popular genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? has a diverse line-up of people tracing their roots. Bertie Ahern, Laura Whitmore, Damien Dempsey, Adrian Dunbar, Pat Shortt and Samantha Power will be doing just that.
After his years portraying Mrs. Brown in one of Ireland and the UK’s most popular sitcoms, Brendan O’Carroll is to present a show “exploring the historic, sometimes turbulent bonds between Ireland and Britain”.
Other eye-catching shows include Street Art, about the burgeoning urban culture in Irish towns and Shooting the Darkness about amatuer war photographers during The Troubles.
Documentary
There’s a whole raft of documentaries, among them is Dublin footballer Philly McMahon exploring illicit drug use in The Hardest Hit and journalist Dearbhail McDonald looking Ireland’s slowing birth rate in Fertility Shock.
This year marks 100 year since the momentous 1918 election and Prime Time’s David McCullough will present a show that reenacts “how it would have been covered by modern television” in a “special event” called Election 1918.
Viewers are to get a look at Ireland’s groundbreaking boxing champion Katie Taylor in a documentary film that follows her training now as a professional.
The film, Katie, is by documentary-maker Ross Whitaker and promises to show the path she’s taken to rebuild her career after defeat in the 2016 Olympics.
RTÉ will attempt to crown Ireland’s Greatest Sportsperson among contenders fromthe 1960s to the 2000s, following a similar format that sought to find Ireland’s Greatest Sporting Moment last year.