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Articles about Sukkah Soul are included in:
Tablet Magazine
October 5, 2009
www.tabletmag.com
If, as the great Jewish thinker Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches, Shabbat, or the Sabbath, is a cathedral of time, a window of holiness at week's end, then this museum-quality cast-bronze Shabbat collection — candlesticks, wine cups, spice box, all on a platter -- surely would be the one we'd raise up at its altar.
Mind you, this nearly 25-pound, seven-piece set is one so fine it deserves to be passed from one generation to the next. But its design, at once poetic and sacred, so speaks to us that merely sliding it off the shelf would signal the sanctification of an ordinary task -- and time -- into something sacramental.
The limited-edition set is a piece of fine art designed by architect Susan Shender, a Highland Park native and the artistic force behind Sukkah Soul, her St. Louis-based enterprise that creates not only sukkahs and chuppas (the veiled canopy central to Jewish weddings), but also a line of Jewish ceremonial objects, including a Hanukkah menorah and a Seder plate.
The Shabbat/Havdalah set, a circular whole composed of triangular parts, a spiral rising from 7- to 8-inches tall, is made using craft methods some 5,000 years old. It takes weeks for each set to be crafted at a foundry in the northern Illinois burg of Oregon, not far from Rockford.
“It's very labor intensive,” says Shender, who adds that she's exploring ways to make a more affordable version. The price of the cast-bronze set: $2,000.
For now, though, we can surely afford to dream.
by Barbara Mahany
Chicago Sunday Tribune
June 7, 2009
Around the neighborhood and across the observance spectrum, Jews are connecting to nature—and each other—through the season's most joyous festival.
Julie Tamarkin of Beachwood, Ohio, views assembling her sukkah not only as a cap on her High Holiday experience but also as something of a physical manifestation of her family's spiritual journey. Tamarkin put up her first sukkah after her youngest son's bar mitzvah in 2006, a celebration that almost didn't happen. Her son wasn't sure he believed in God and had mixed feelings about Judaism.
"I didn't want him to do it just because it's what we do," Tamarkin says. "I didn't want him to go through the motions if it didn't mean anything to him. But he kept taking the next step and the next step, and he became a bar mitzvah in September three years ago. It felt like a miracle happened. Someone who felt lost and disconnected Jewishly became connected in a very real and honest way. Then came Sukkot. What a great next step."
She ordered a kit from SukkahSoul, a designer prefab sukkah kit crafted from cedar poles and a white translucent veil-like material for walls. Together with her son, she assembled the structure. Now Tamarkin's holiday tradition includes inviting friends over after temple at the end of Yom Kippur. They have coffee and dessert before heading outside to start building in the dark. "As a Reform Jew, there are the holidays that everybody knows about and everyone participates in," she says. "Then there are the less obvious ones [like Sukkot]. There's richness in it, and until you engage in it, you don't really understand it. You can't just hear or read about it."
Tamarkin refers to her sukkah as a temporary oasis. She loves to sit and read in it and have friends over to visit inside its romantic white gauzy walls. Last year she invited her yoga class back to have fruit in her sukkah. "It brings life to our house," she says. "People who never come over come over. There's something magical about it. It's almost like an apparition in the backyard. It's there for a little bit, and then it goes away for a year."
by Beth Kanter
Jewish Woman Magazine
Published by Jewish Women International
Fall 2009
www.jwman.org
The inspiration for this sukka—made of cedar, steel and net siding—comes from architect and SukkahSoul Company founder Susan Shender’s spiritual searching, and from her disappointment in traditional sukka kits.
While enrolled in a Florence Melton Adult Mini-School Jewish program some years ago, Shender and her study partners decided to erect a sukka. But the outdated kit they had to work with came lacking instructions and aesthetic appeal, and the finished product had to be stabilized with additional slats of wood. The challenge of designing a striking and sturdy sukka immediately appealed to Shender. Building on the commandment to beautify the mitzvot, she turned her professional expertise to creating a simple-to-assemble and attractive sukka that stores easily. The result is the SukkahSoul sukka (www.sukkahsoul.com).
“Love of the ritual and appreciation for sources came together for me in the beauty of a good design, and it was a profound experience,” Shender says. “I hope the beauty of the physical environment deepens delight and pleasure in the celebration of this holiday.”
by Libby Goldberg
Hadassah Magazine
August / September 2007
www.hadassah.org
A few years ago, Susan Shender of St. Louis and several of her friends studying in the Melton Adult Jewish Education program were given the assignment to research Kohelet, also known as the Book of Ecclesiastes. Among the things they discovered is that the book is traditionally read during Sukkot. One of the women had an old sukkah kit stashed in her garage, so they decided to assemble it for the holiday and to gather within its walls to learn Kohelet together.
While sitting in the sukkah, Shender, an architect who has designed community health centers, university projects and a bird garden at the St. Louis Zoo, began to examine the structure. She decided she could design a better one. "I thought it was a great problem to research. I wanted to come up with something that was meaningful, as well as easy to assemble and store," says Shender.
One of the things she learned from her studies is the obligation of hiddur mitzvah—to beautify the commandment. That knowledge inspired her: "I wanted the sukkah I designed to be beautiful from inside looking out and outside looking in."
SukkahSoul is the result of her efforts. Crafted of cedar and white polyethylene netting, this prefab sukkah is aesthetically pleasing and structurally sound. The design is also mystically evocative: Shender uses triangles in her design, bringing to mind the pattern of the Sefirot, the Kabbalistic plan for understanding the manifestations of God. These manifestations—among them kindness, strength and beauty—correspond to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the other mystical guests welcomed to the sukkah each night during the holiday.
Each kit builds an 8-foot square sukkah, enough for seating six to eight people around a 4-foot round table. The kit arrives partially assembled and is easy to erect. Detailed instructions, ideas for decorating and sukkah prayers are included. At the holiday’s end, the kit breaks down for easy storage in four narrow boxes. Kits sell for $769 plus shipping and handling. To learn more, go to sukkahsoul.com or call 314-610-2560.
by Sue Tomchin
Jewish Woman
Published by Jewish Women International
Fall 2007
www.jwman.org
An excerpt from The Forward article
“Sukkot: From Humble to Inspired”
There's something magical about being inside of a sukkah; as Jewish commentators note, residing in the sukkah is one of the few commandments you fulfill with your entire body. Sure, it can seem a bit strange, especially in places like New York, where eating outside in October often means wearing a ski jacket. But there's also a sense of being protected, perhaps not by sturdy brick walls but by what the Jewish liturgy calls "the tabernacle (sukkah) of peace."
Still, there's no question that building a sukkah takes a lot of work — which is why those ready-made sukkah kits fetch anywhere from $300 to $2,000 for a single-family size.....
And some, like SukkahSoul, are basically selling works of art....SukkahSoul is the work of Susan Shender, an architect who was inspired to create a more aesthetically appealing sukkah kit after erecting a kit made up of “unmarked pieces of unattractive pine and hardware store connectors.” Shender said that “the design problem captured my imagination.” She worked under the belief that the rabbinic obligation of hiddur mitzvah (the fulfillment of a commandment) could extend not just to decorating the sukkah but also to designing it.
The result is a delicate looking but architecturally sound construction of thin poles with cedar and translucent fabric sides. Inspired by the way that the Ten Sefirot — prisms of divine energy, according to Kabbalah — are arranged in the popular Tree of Life, the SukkahSoul design has triangular elements as well as rectangular ones. The Sefirot are already connected to the Sukkot holiday — they are represented by the seven ushpizin (mystical guests) invited to the sukkah over the course of the week. The SukkahSoul design weaves them into the architecture; if you look at it, you can almost see the Tree of Life in front of you, cradling the guests of the sukkah within its branches. Shender said, “I hope people find as much meaning and beauty in the structure of the SukkahSoul sukkah as I have in designing it.”
By Jay Michaelson
The Forward
October 14, 2005
www.forward.com
“The Love That Shines Through”
by Michael Winerip
The New York Times
October 23, 2008
www.nytimes.com
The sukkah Ms. Shender drew up in response, an open lattice of leaning wooden members and diaphanous white fabric, was the only one of the four kits I ordered that could be described as pretty. It was the kind of gauzy shelter where a reality-show bachelor would make his million-dollar proposal.
by Michael Tortorello
The New York Times
October 2, 2008
An excerpt from Jewish Ledger article “Sukkah Kits 101”
I had no desire to build a sukkah until I became a mother, at which point the desire was born with a vengeance. All of a sudden, a sukkah on Succoth was not just necessary—it was essential. Memories of the sukkot my father had erected in my childhood years returned full force and I was determined that the mitzvah of building and dining in the sukkah would become part of our family tradition.
Little did I know, it was easier said than done.
Dutifully, my husband went off to the hardware store, returning with various metal poles and sack cloth to form the walls. Four hours later our succah was looking half decent, but a few days later, after wind and rain, it was a dishevelled mess on the ground that took several more hours to clean up.
The poles were sequestered in a dusty corner of the garage and the wind-torn cloth sacks were saved for another year with better weather. But we were disillusioned with the prospect of building a succah, and even the kids' excitement as Succoth drew close couldn't bring us to try and build one again for another couple of years.
This year I decided there had to be a better way, and a mail order succah seemed just the right mixture of ease and convenience. I began my search online with Sukkah Soul (www.sukkahsoul.com), the brainchild of Susan Shender. Shender offers a cedar sukkah with steel connectors and white, transparent polyethylene netting that covers three sides.
It's easy to fall for the pictures on her website, for the sukkah looks elegant, gracious and just the place to invite your girlfriends for a Succoth lunch or a dusk-filled dinner. The complicated part comes when you see the prices, which start at $695 (without the netting sides) and go up to $789 (shipping included). Sure, it can be used year after year, but for many of us, it's hard to justify spending that much on a sukkah.
Still, customer reviews on Shender's website are very positive. One said it took two hours to erect, another called Sukkah Soul a work of ‘a creative genius,’ and a customer in New York said it transformed her backyard space into a fairy tale.
by Lauren Kramer
Jewish Ledger
September 13, 2008