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A sukkah of tomorrow, held up by its inhabitants

by
Susan Shender
October 05, 2009

In advance of Sukkot, we reached out to architects and designers and asked for contemporary reimaginings of the sukkah. Susan Shender first came to our attention as the creator of the SukkahSoul sukkah, a delicate yet sturdy construction inspired, in part, by the sefirot of kabbalah. In this sketch, she offers a sukkah held together by its inhabitants. She explains:

After receiving your request, I found myself thinking about it constantly. What I came up with surprised me. It’s sort of a lofty idea. But how do I show that graphically? While driving to synagogue, I heard an NPR piece about graphic novels and thought that that was a good method to use. My response involves the intersection of a quote from Deuteronomy, the layout of a page of Talmud, and the spirit of a graphic novel. Now, when dealing with conceptual ideas, reality is not always aligned with the vision. In this case, for instance, it might be tricky to eat in a sukkah when one is the sukkah.