Sukkahs on Wheels
Times Square is not what it used to be. Once a shady, drug-infested corner of Manhattan, the neighborhood is now a bustling center filled with restaurants, shops, shiny office buildings and, most recently, two 48-foot-long sukkahs, courtesy of Chabad-Lubavitch.
For the past 20 years, Chabad has thrown makeshift sukkahs onto the beds of pickup trucks “to bring mitzvot to the Jewish people’s doorsteps,” said Rabbi Levi Baumgarten, director of the Chabad-Lubavitch mitzvah tank. The idea came from the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who led the Chabad-Lubavitch movement until his death in 1994. The sukkahs are fully equipped with lulav and etrog, allowing passersby to fulfill the biblical commandment to make the blessing of the Four Species on Sukkot.
In addition to the massive stationary sukkahs, Chabad has more than 40 traveling sukkahs roaming New York, New Jersey and Connecticut during Sukkot. Chabad also reaches thousands of people all year long with its “mitzvah tanks,” or mobile mini-synagogues.
According to Baumgarten, one traveling sukkah costs around $720 per week. Regardless of cost, fatigue or inclement weather, Baumgarten and dozens of other emissaries hope to draw Jews back to their roots.
“If I touched one person, if I brought one person closer to Judaism,” he told The Shmooze, “then it was a great day.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
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 the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
