I feel like if women can complain about Pesach, then men should get to say something about Sukkos. At the very least, there should be shiurim to help us cope.
Sukkos is not easy on men in ways that most women don’t even think about. For most women, Sukkos is a pretty relaxing holiday that involves eating outside, shaking the minim at about noon so their husband could put them away already, and watching men walk around in circles. What is there to complain about? Wearing coats? I feel like as much as women complain about having to eat in a coat, I don’t remember the last year we actually used coats.
And yes, there is cooking, but there’s cooking every yom tov, and a lot of men help with the cooking these days. And if you don’t like cooking, you can buy the food. It’s not Pesach.
But as far as men, first of all, there is obviously the building of the sukkah.
Yes, the main part of Sukkos prep is the building of huts by a tribe of men who, statistically, don’t know how to build. So we build walls that barely stand and a ceiling that leaks.
“No, no; it’s supposed to leak.”
Ok.
I’m not saying women don’t help build the sukkah, but most women, if they get up to a part of building the sukkah that they don’t want to do, will just say, “I’m going to let the men do this part,” and that’s it. If a man were cleaning the kitchen for Pesach, and he got up to, say, the stove grates, and he said, “I’m going to let the women do this part,” he would have to spend the rest of the day getting the grates medically removed from around his neck.
And it’s not like Pesach where if your house isn’t sparkling, no one will know except your family and maybe a couple of guests who you know for a fact did not clean their house at all. On Sukkos, all the neighborhood kids and hopefully some chaperones are going to come up to your sukkah and judge it. Specifically to judge it. And yes, the kids are mostly judging the decorations, which are not technically strictly the man’s department. But if you don’t do a good job with the decorations, the kids shrug and move on. As opposed to if all the kids pile into the sukkah and one of the walls falls outward, then that’s all they’re gonna talk about for years.
But okay, let’s talk about an area in which women can’t help: Hoshanos. We’re supposed to be going in a circle, which should be simple enough, but no one apparently cares if anyone else makes it all the way around the circle. Everyone’s constantly merging and cutting each other off and driving on the shoulder and walking across tables – and I can only imagine what’s it’s like in Israel.
And meanwhile, you’re most of the way through the Alef Bais and you can still technically touch your seat with your lulav, and the chazzan is in some other room up to who knows what letter, and you don’t know why no one’s moving all of a sudden and—Why does that kid keep poking me with his lulav???
And Hoshanos is not easy in the first place, because really you’re supposed to hold all 4 minim in your hands at the same time – preferably TWO hands, halachically -- and keep your tallis on at the same time, so how do you hold your Hoshanos card? I suppose the idea is that you just repeat by heart what the chazzan said – that’s why Hoshanos was designed that way, like Birchas Kohanim, but in this situation, the chazzan is off in a different room. By the time the words that he says get down the line to you, there’s no way you’re saying the same words he’s saying.
A whole lot of Sukkos, for men, is about “How many items can you hold?” We have to carry all that stuff to shul too, plus our tallis bag, plus our kids’ hands, and also, if it’s a windy day, keep our hats on.
“I have an idea!” our wives say. “Why don’t you take Shuey to shul!”
Shuey is going spend the entire davening touching my lulav.
Yes, the women bring a lot of the kids to shul. But they don’t have to get there on time to beat the first ten people to laying lulavim across the tables.
Not to mention that minim – especially in shul – require constant maintenance and fidgeting. Everything has to be lined up just right, and certain things have to be taller than other things. If the hadassim are supposed to be taller than the aravos, why on earth do they always cut aravos longer than hadassim? We have to keep pushing the aravos down until they’re falling out the bottom of the bundle.
And meanwhile, the lulav rings keep slipping off the top of the lulav every time you take it out, but you can’t put them back onto the lulav from the top; you have to come around the bottom like one of those pencils with stacking points. Or you have to be willing to get stabbed a lot.
You also have to spend all week trying to keep your minim alive when they have no interest in being kept alive. When you buy your wife flowers for Shabbos, they’re dead before the next Shabbos. Imagine if you bought her willows.
Assuming they were kosher in the first place. I have zero confidence in my knowledge of what I’m looking of when I buy minim. How do I pick? There’s a certain logic to be said that the salesmen will not in good conscience sell you something passul. But if that were true, restaurants wouldn’t need mashgichim. (Also, I mean, he did sell you aravos that were longer than your hadassim.)
There’s also a huge societal pressure to knock all the leaves off your aravah-bundle in five hits. I have zero doubt that if it was women doing this in shul there would not be this pressure.
And getting back to carrying things, most men are still working out the art of carrying a bowl, a cup of coffee, cereal and milk, and a folding chair to the sukkah in one trip while also handling doorknobs and sliding doors and a zipper that they have to bend down to open, all so they can have breakfast in the Sukkah by themselves on Chol Hamoed. If we can master that, carrying the hadassim and aravos around a shul would be a piece of cake.
Great, I forgot the cake. What am I making a Leishev on? My chair?
A woman generally doesn’t deal with the carrying thing, because she’s not going out there to eat by herself. She either has someone else eating with her, or she eats inside.
But men really CAN’T eat anywhere else. Women go on Chol Hamoed trips and take whatever foods they want. (“Wow, this is so much easier than Pesach!”) Men take exactly what we did take on Pesach -- yogurt and baby carrots and string cheese -- and carefully not enough to fill us up.
“Oh, but the pizza shop has a sukkah!”
Have you ever been in a pizza-shop sukkah? There’s a reason women don’t go in there.
We also have this pressure to sleep in the Sukkah. Even if we have good reasons to sleep inside, it’s embarrassing to let anyone know that. Meanwhile, very few women know the feeling of waking up in middle of a rainstorm and running inside carrying a mattress and a blanket and a pillow and your reading material.
“Did you zip the sukkah closed?”
“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”
And if you as a woman do not sleep in a sukkah, no one will judge you. You don’t need a reason. You just tell everyone that you enjoy the break from your husband, and we have to pretend we’re not offended by that. Because at least it means you’re davening for good weather. That’s helpful at least.
And then there’s Simchas Torah, when we have to dance, despite the fact that most of us don’t really know how. Yet the shul takes down the mechitzos, and the women get to watch us, like a reverse Tu B’Av. And talk shidduchim.
Basically, Sukkos is the holiday for Jewish men to do – in public -- things that Jewish men do not traditionally know how to do – particularly building, plant maintenance, and dancing. Your back hurts from Pesach cleaning? I’ve thrown my back out on Simchas Torah tossing my kid. More than once. The whole yom tov is a judge of how masculine you are -- how strong, how brave, how creative, how handy, and how learned.
Though we don’t mean to complain. We enjoy Sukkos, despite the work. And we know you enjoy Pesach, so let’s stop this already.
In fact, when it comes to Pesach, there’s a famous song called “Pesach Blues,” in which women complain about making Pesach. Sung by a man, of course. And I give Abie Rotenberg props for writing down his wife’s complaints as she was saying them.
“No, no, it’s for a song.”
And before Pesach, there’s always someone saying that we don’t have to clean as much as we actually do. WHAT DID I LIST HERE THAT I DO NOT HAVE TO DO?
So maybe I should do a parody of the song:
“Don’t you love the holiday of Kippurim?
What a great time for kids and men…”
But I don’t have time, because I need to prep for Sukkos.
Maybe my wife should write it.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.