You can buy Sukkot gift boxes that say ‘tuchus’ on Amazon

Due to backwards letters, the party favors sold on Amazon are a bit cheeky

Alexa, we have a problem. Image by Canva

By PJ Grisar September 26, 2024

Talk about ass backwards.

For the upcoming holiday of Sukkot, an Amazon seller is offering cute cardstock “Happy Sukkot Gift Boxes” complete with the festival’s name in Hebrew. Or well, that was the intent.

Since the Hebrew is rendered the wrong way, the boxes, in fact, say “Tuchus.” Jewish Twitter is laughing its butts off.

ohmygosh these say "tuchus" on them and i am dying who did this 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/k1HAxBsduI
— Dr. Hannah Lebovits (@HannahLebovits) September 26, 2024

Amazon Jewish items gone wrong.

They’re selling “Sukkot” gift boxes labeled “Tuchus”

But the best part is: there’s not a single Sukkot related item (except maybe the streamers & branches) but there’s: a menorah, matzah, sufganiyot, and mishloach manot boxes.

Hysterical. 😭 pic.twitter.com/9LKOBYLpnN
— Dani Klein 🎗️ YeahThatsKosher (@YeahThatsKosher) September 26, 2024

Amazon creator who clearly doesn’t speak Hebrew. 😂

Wishing you and your family a Happy & Healthy Tuchus. ♥️

תוכוס סמח! pic.twitter.com/6D1pqOBb6s
— Yaakov Langer (@jacklanger) September 26, 2024

To be completely fair to HOWAF, the company producing these party favors, they are continuing a long, well-meaning, but ultimately clueless tradition of mass-produced goods for the Jewish holidays. It’s a longstanding custom to include shofars, menorahs and challahs on all party favors, regardless of whether or not the chag is at all associated with these objects. (An image of the Sukkot gift boxes in action shows a man breaking matzo, ’cause, close enough.)

Much cheeky humor has emerged from these cultural crossed wires.

Butt — sorry, but — it’s not quite as common to see Hebrew blunders that spell a word that is, by itself, funny.

Hebrew letters, which are read right to left, can be tricky, as members of Jewish Voice for Peace learned the hard way at a recent encampment Seder. Though these tuchus gift boxes, unlike many unforced errors from retail giants, may give one pause.

What is Sukkot if not an occasion sitting in a sukkah in remembrance of our ancestors? When we shake the lulav, do we not also shake our booties (at least a little) by the s’chach? Already I am thinking about alternate applications for an etrog emoji.

While some may think it a kind of sacrilege to insert a word so base into a fundamental Jewish holiday (all puns intended), these boxes are still sure to be a sought-after party favor for the holiday — provided guests don’t mind being the butt of the joke.

PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re near the end of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO