I remember the first sukkah I built, actually preparing and decorating it, in 1946 in Atlanta, Georgia.
I was a seven-year-old army brat, a Norfolk Tars baseball fan, and my father, Lt.-Col. Louis Geffen, had finally completed his six-year tour of duty as a judge advocate in World War II.
My mother, Anna, my father, and I drove from Norfolk, Virgina, to Atlanta in our prewar Plymouth – a car to remember, especially for me.
We arrived on April 1, 1946. I started school and Hebrew school, was sent to Camp Daniel Morgan for four weeks that summer, and then came the High Holy Days, followed by Sukkot.
In 1929, when my grandfather had moved his congregation, Shearith Israel, to the South Side of Atlanta, he had bought a home nearby for his family of eight.
Very exacting, having been ordained as a rabbi at Slobodka Yeshiva in Kovno, Lithuania, he found a house with a spare room on the ground floor, which jutted out from the main building and had its own roof. He hired a carpenter to prepare the room so that its roof could be moved up and down by a pulley. From 1929 until 1952, that room served as the Geffen family sukkah. Under the roof was a thatched ceiling ready to be hung with decorations, paper chains, and fresh fruit. During the rest of the year, it was used as a storeroom.
Working on a sukkah in 1946
As Sukkot approached in September 1946, the sukkah team was ready for its joyous work. My grandfather prepared and dispatched the Four Species of the Sukkot bouquet to members of his synagogue, to two other rabbis in Atlanta, and to a further 25, or so, individuals across six southern states.
A few days before Sukkot, my grandmother invited me to make chains for the sukkah, to draw pictures of whatever I wanted, and to come to decorate the sukkah. I wanted to be clever, so I asked my mother to bring cotton balls home from the cotton waste office she managed. I pasted the cotton balls on pieces of paper of various colors.
I excitedly appeared for sukkah duty. My grandmother and our home help, Mamie Walden, who worked for the Geffens for many years, had already begun decorating the sukkah.
Star balls which had been opened were strung up, bananas with a string on them were hung, my paper chains were attached to the ceiling, and some apples hung up by their stems – they did not last long.
I began moving around the sukkah, pinning up my pictures with thumbtacks, and some even with paste, on the wooden walls. There was a permanent table in the sukkah room, also made from wood, with benches attached to the wall, where my grandfather slept every night of Sukkot.
He took me upstairs, where the rope and pulley were ready; he had the rope checked every year to make sure it was strong enough, had not rotted, and would not break. He watched me practice with the pulley, and I guess he was satisfied.
The morning of the first day of Sukkot, I arose early and ran up to my grandfather’s home. He had not left for shul yet. He handed me his lulav, adorned with hadassim and aravot, and his beautiful etrog. Together with him, I said the blessing with the etrog held upside down, then turned it over and said the sheheheyanu blessing. Last, he showed me how to shake the lulav in six different directions.
I have lovingly recalled performing that joyous mitzvah with him for every single one of these past 79 years.
The writer is a retired rabbi whose home is in Jerusalem. He, his late wife, Rita, and their three children made aliyah in 1977. His family now totals 16, all living in Israel.