A Sukkah in Frankfurt

By Susanna Calimani*

In Venice, for Sukkot, the Jewish Community builds a big sukkah in the garden of the Community Centre: it is decorated with childrens’ drawings, fruit and vegetables hanging from the ceiling

When we were kids, we also used to make garlands with crepe paper, and the father of one of us used to bring loads of ears of corn to be hung, together with eggplants, bell peppers, pomegranates, and bananas. The first to fall down were bananas, showing signs of distress after only a couple of days; pomegranates and corn could last much longer but were the most dangerous, and when sitting under them we always double checked to make sure they were tied carefully.

One year, during a lunch, we were betting on the life expectancy of an eggplant, and a few minutes later the eggplant fell down on the table: for a moment we thought that maybe that was the proof of the existence of God, or maybe of the existence of the Eggplant God. Halfway between misbelievers and idolaters.

The Jewish Community organizes dinners for those who want to fulfill the mitzvah of sitting and eating in the sukkah, but they do not have one. At the very beginning, there were only coldcut sandwiches, big and thick, soft the first night, stale the day after, hardly edible the second day, for the bread could not be bought on mo’ed. Things got slightly better when bread could be frozen on the first day and defrosted the following days. Then my mother joined the preparation of the food and she introduced mayo in the sandwiches, because a sandwich without mayo is like “a cart without oxen”.

Then she also asked Teresina, the backbone of all our meals in the community, to prepare tons of ‘concia di zucchine’ and ‘concia di melanzane’ (fried zucchini and eggplants seasoned in olive oil and garlic) to alternate the coldcut sandwiches, so as to offer a vegetarian option, but mainly to avoid gout complications.
The following year we also cut the big sandwiches in half, so that people could try different tastes.

The last two years I spent Sukkoth here in Frankfurt.

I went to the sukkah of the local Jewish Community, daydreaming of half a sandwich with ‘concia di zucchine’ (dripping oil from all sides), and thinking that as a second half I would have chosen a mortadella with mayo.
The sukkah was simple, no corn, no pomegranates, no eggplants; and on the tables there were no sandwiches, but big bowls full of potato salad and plenty of gefilte fish with horseradish.

I shall send them my mother next year.

*Susanna Calimani is a wandering economist currently based in Frankfurt.