from Habitza.com http://habitza.com/2009/11/06/the-art-of-shabbat-invitation-hinting/  by Vera Resnick

Here it is, freshly squeezed – the world’s very first Primer on The Art of Shabbat Invitation Hinting!

Interested in someone?  Always wanted to hint effectively but never quite got the hang of it?  Try Shabbat Invitation Hinting!  You’ll never look stupid, never put yourself out there, and never have to make any real decisions.  What could be better?

Shabbat Invitations for Singles decoded:

Invite on Shabbat for the next Shabbat: I’m really interested in you – but not quite ready to ask you on a date.

Call at the beginning of the week and invite for a meal: I’m really interested, I even went to the trouble of finding your phone number – but I’m not quite ready to ask you on a date.

Call mid-week and invite for a meal: See, I have your phone number – but I’m not quite ready to ask you on a date.

Call just before Shabbat and invite for a meal: See, I have your number, I’m a spontaneous kind of person – but I’m not quite ready to ask you on a date.

Call and invite, and please prepare most of the food: See, I have your number, I’m a sharing kind of person – but I’m not quite ready to ask you on a date.

Invite for a meal and it’s just the two of us: I might be interested in you, this might be a date, but this way I don’t have to admit it, right?

Multiple Shabbat invitations (with or without food request): I really enjoy your company (and your cooking) – but I probably won’t ever be quite ready to ask you on a date.  I will ask you for advice about my girlfriends/boyfriends though…

Please note:  in the 21st Century, Shabbat Invitation Hinting is an “equal opportunity employer” – the above applies to both guys/girls.

Any further suggestions for this Primer are welcome! 

post them here: http://habitza.com/2009/11/06/the-art-of-shabbat-invitation-hinting/

William Safire passed away, but his "On Language" columns in The New York Times
will be remembered by his many readers.

Safire wrote about "vocabugap"--a word he was forced to coin today to describe the
situations in our lives for which we have no English word--and have to turn to a foreign
language for lexical expansion.

He said [1994], "People who are unwilling to try new words are the type who refrain
from dunking doughnuts."

Hence I give you Safire's Top 10 Yiddish Words:

1.  "shtarker"     Strong-minded person willing to wield
      power

2.  "schlep"   To pull; to drag.  Dunkin' Donuts urged customers to try its new bagels through the use of billboards reading:  "It is worth the schlep."

3.  "schmooze"  To chat.  "High Schmooze," a film and TV  term, represents a Hollywood event with a high proportion of "players" in attendance.

4.  "tchotchke"  A trinket or knick-knack. Barbra Streisand  [Look magazine, 1969], talks about her thrift shop goodies, her art works, and her favorite things:  "I'm a slave to all my tchotchkes."
 
5.  "tochis"/"tokhes" - the buttocks. Safire wrote that "there are vast swaths of the nation where nobody knows atochis from a tchotchke.  Growing up in the flyover, I learned the English word tush, "nonsense" - immortalized in the "Mikado" character Pish Tush - long before I was introduced to tushies."   David Bader ("Haikus for Jews"), wrote,
       Yenta.....  Schmeer.  Gevalt.
       Shlemiel.  Shlimazl.  Tochis.
       Oy!  To be fluent!

6.  "meshuggeneh"  Crazy.  Jackie Mason writes, "A man sees John Gotti about to park his car in a space, and then decides to beat him to it.  That's real meshuggener ("How to Talk Jewish")

     meshugener (m), meshegenah (f):  A  loony.  Whether he thinks his underwear
     is after him or barrels over Niagara Falls, he's one letter short of an M&M.("The Yiddish Dictionary of Fools" by Marnie Winston-Macauley)

7.  "mishegoss"/"meshugas"  Mad, insane, a piece of tomfoolery. Barbra Streisand, in a 1977 Playboy interview, spoke about being in grouptherapy.  "I'm finding out about life, talking to people, hearing what they feel and think..  They've got the same meshagoss I do; it has nothing to do with my being an actress.."

8.  "gay vays"  Go know..  "Gay vays that [in 2008] l in 5 of JDaters  say their mother paid for their JDate membership."

9.  "mishpoche"  Family.  Sid Caesar used many Yiddishisms in his skits.  One of his most
     memorable was a Japanese skit called "Gantze Mishpoche."

    Jackie Mason wrotes, "When a friend  asks, 'So how's the family?'  and the Jew answers, 'Don't ask!' he will then tell you anyway--for three hours.  The most dangerous thing for a Jew is one word about the mishpocheh because he's always dying to tell you...If you happen  not to use the word mishpocheh right away, he'll be listening for it for the next hour and a half, because there's no way you can get away from the other Jew, especially if he has two children.  And if one's a doctor, you're there all day." ("How to Talk Jewish")

10. "beygl"   Bagel.  A donut with rigor mortis.  A doughnut dipped in cement.
    
---------------------   
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe is the author of two books:  "Yiddish For Dog & Cat Lovers"
and "Are Yentas, Kibitzers, & Tummlers Weapons of Mass Instruction?  Yiddish
Trivia."

Jordan Hiller's Top 25 Essential Jewish Films is coming down to the wire...

#6  Homicide

Homicide, David Mamet's ponderous film about a Jewish cop losing his way, loses its way whenever it wanders from the scene of the crime. Mamet's talent as a hard boiled writer for the screen and stage is often on display in this story of Detective Robert Gold (reserved, vulnerable Joe Mantegna) "catching" a small case while in hot pursuit of a big case, but Mamet has Gold on an existential journey of discovery that allows for no accidents.
If you read Mamet's The Wicked Son (2006), his stream of consciousness rant about anti-Semitism, Jewish destiny, and our eccentric God, you would know that Mamet, not easily discernable as a Jew based on his work (unlike, say, Woody Allen or Neil Simon), is quite smitten with his Judaism. Despite a professional choice to write mainly about other topics, Judaism consumes him. So much so and with such passion and zealousness that it appears in his personal life he constantly walks the line between crusader and madman. His writing style in more popular works like Glengarry Glen Ross can be viewed as his replacing powder kegs on the brink of explosion with sharp words and dialogue. When it comes to Jewish paranoia, Mamet is equally volatile. Add to these anxieties and preoccupations his genius of artistic expression, and Homicide, Mamet’s third directorial effort, promised to be a fireworks display of soul bearing pathos and rhetoric unlike anything else in the writer’s pantheon. And it is, but that turns out not necessarily to be a positive progression. The marriage of Mamet’s two obsessions manages two neautralize and obscure both.

Gold’s hardscrabble unit is on the trail of major crime figure Randolph (Ving Rhames in one of his first feature film roles) which brings the FBI to town and in an early scene Gold and a condescending FBI agent butt heads. The agent dismissively calls Gold a “kike” and from that slur we learn not only that Gold is Jewish, but based on his reaction to the insult that he is terribly uneasy about his ethnicity. Cops are supposed to be Irish like Gold’s partner, Sullivan (played by William H. Macy with his typical brand of weaselly muscle), and Mamet defines the difference between those meant to be and those forever outsiders as a glaring chasm. While Gold is certainly accepted by the squad and respected, he regularly fumbles with his gun, gets attacked by a thug early on but refuses to press charges, and most significantly, he is designated the manipulator of the group. Gold is sent in to speak with reluctant informants and witnesses, to seduce them with falsely sympathetic words and hand holding, gain their trust, exploit their moment of weakness, and betray them. Gold, the Jew, can convince a mother turn on her own son. Gold, the Jew, is softer than the others, more cerebral, more sensitive, less comfortable with the blue collar, macho, aloofness that his fellow officers carry off with such natural aplomb.
On the way to question a known Randolph associate, Gold and Sullivan come across a murder scene in a poor, black neighborhood. An old Jewish woman was shot in her store and the young kids behind the police tape claim to know the killer’s motive. “They were after the fortune in her basement,” they bellow repeatedly. Gold is soon told that he’s off the Randolph investigation and that he’s caught the Klein murder. Mamet has already signaled that quite the opposite is true. The Klein murder has caught a tumbling, aimless Gold.

Much of Homicide deals with Mamet’s argument that, as Jews, no matter how we delineate or categorize ourselves, we can’t ever escape a unifying collectiveness. Whether agnostic cop or Yiddish speaking doctor, we are in the same rickety boat. The Kleins are awkward, unappealing, ultra wealthy Jews who communicate with outsiders rudely and disdainfully, and exhibit an unsavory sense of entitlement. They likely represent everything Mamet hates about a well represented grade of Jew and his disdain is reflected through Gold. Over Gold’s adamant protests to be taken off the case, he’s coldly told by the captain to stop complaining and to deal with “his people.” Gold responds that the Kleins are not his people. They disgust him. The pay too much taxes. The make him sick.

Homicide’s setup is rather exquisite. It’s engaging to find Gold on a fateful road where his affiliations as dedicated officer and apathetic Jew come into conflict. Mamet provides an intriguing crime that, in classic thriller format, requires much unraveling before resolution.
The downfall of Homicide is Mamet’s abandonment of a pure criminal investigation noir with Jewish undertones in order to explore a sordid and convoluted array of Jewish identity issues. Yes, all the revelations and introspections are delivered somewhat in the context of examining evidence found in continuance of the Klein murder investigation, but Mamet is clearly interested in other things. Klein and who actually killed her are essentially irrelevant. Mamet wants to uncover secret plots to kill the Jews by neo-Nazis and the covert militant Jewish organizations that combat them. He wants us to believe that Gold will find peace and his Jewish essence by blowing up a shop that fronts for a Jew hating propaganda machine (“Crime is caused by the Ghetto, the Ghetto is caused by the Jew!”). The bizarre extremes to which Gold is rather easily pulled in reaction to his sudden Jewish calling remain both unconvincing and troubling as the narrative begins to fragment. Watching the film is truly like experiencing the ebbs and flows of Mamet’s raging inner storm. Sometimes his pulp, clever writing takes over, sometimes his Jewish compulsions win the day. The effect is jarringly uneven. We are asked to believe a range of premises just before they are discounted by a drastic, unsubstantiated turn of events.

Mamet wrote The Wicked Son fifteen years after scribing Homicide, and it is disheartening to fathom how little insight he gained into his own Judaism over that period. He is absolutely correct that Judaism and what being Jewish critically means can and should be a daily struggle, but to merely increase the size of the question mark daily is a vain and bitter pursuit (though many Jews do live that way).

Because of Mamet’s own uncertainty, he winds Gold’s odyssey to an ambiguous destination. A concrete maze that hits a brick wall. A cluttered staircase that leads up, up, up, and eventually to a roof beneath a city’s night sky where no answers are written in the stars. Was any of it real? we are left wondering. Are we only different in our minds? Is our victimhood a figment of wildly paranoid imaginations?  Mamet has no more insight than the rest of us. Just another Jew being cautious, watching his back, ready to sound the alarm.

9. Jewish kids get home too late from Yeshiva and have too much homework to go trick-or-treating. And its a bitch to get out of mishmar.

8. How can you waste perfectly good eggs on a "trick"?

7. Jewish kids would never be satisfied with a "fun-sized" chocolate bar. And what's so damn fun about about 2 bites of chocolate anyway? Remember those huge candy bars you could get at Hershey Park? Now that's what I call fun sized!

6. Orange really does not look good against our Semitic skin.

5. Jews don't eat pumkin. They just don't.
(note: Butternut Squash or Tzimmes is as fluorescent as we get)

4. We are haunted by guilt, not ghosts.

3. Jews have Purim, anyway. And I'll take booze over candy any day.

2. Rugelach and apple strudel don't travel well in those plastic jack-o-lanterns.

1. We just scare way too easily.

#7 Brighton Beach Memoirs

Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, the first play (then film) of his semi-autobiographical Eugene Jerome trilogy, takes us back to Simon’s childhood and encompasses a few hectic days in the life of an American Jewish family in the late 1930's. Over the course of the production, the domestic mayhem that unfolds in such a short period of time is indicative of all families. Somehow each conflict, from inception to moment of crisis, is at the same time minor, overblown, and cataclysmic, which can easily reflect the tantrums and sordid politics found in every household. However, Simon's prism is unmistakably a Jewish one, and not just because of the heavy "my muthuh, my fathuh" accents and arguably stereotypical characterizations.
Eugene, played well here by rookie Jonathan Silverman (but even better by Matthew Broderick in Biloxi Blues), narrates the film, sometimes breaking the fourth wall, and always representing the intelligent yet naïve, smart aleck observer. Eugene is essentially the serene, put upon philosopher, there to grin and bear it because only he has the omnipotent perspective. It’s as if he is relating the tale with the benefit of hindsight glasses, knowing everything will turn out fine and dandy in the end. Simon may have seen himself the same way in the context of his family growing up, as is the classic portrait of the artist. Eugene’s only significant problem is that everyone around him is confronting some sort of personal calamity.
Though Eugene is there to help where he can, the weight of the family’s issues fall upon Mr. Jack Jerome, a hard working saint, yet his precarious health becomes a source of worry once the load becomes drastically and suddenly heavier. If only he could spend a few minutes in peace, listening to the radio and its troubling reports of the Nazi rise in Europe. His cousins are in Poland and the news is getting worse.
Eugene’s pretty young cousin, who along with her widowed mother lives with the family, threatens to run away for a shot at Broadway. His older brother has been fired for standing on principle and complicates the problem by gambling, while we are lead to believe the family needs every penny to survive (though they are probably closer to middle class).

A very tightly wound and impressive Blythe Danner plays Eugene’s mother and her predicament is that she suffers from a severe case of being a Jewish mother. She comes across as impossible and despotic, while somehow maintaining an immovable compassion and devotion to her husband, sister, and children. If anyone, Danner holds the film together, which is appropriate considering, if anyone, mothers anchor family. Finally, remarkably pathetic Aunt Blanche (Judith Ivey) is constantly at a loss, devastated since her husband’s death, and now being courted by the alcoholic Irishman from across the street. One preeminent Jewish dilemma raised by Mr. Simon is that of assimilation. While the Jerome’s are by no means religious (though Mrs. Jerome encourages her husband to go to shul and pray when the flurry of tribulations arrive), there is certainly an overarching message of “We are better off keeping to ourselves.” Simon does somewhat present a counterargument, but the well established law, as was undoubtedly impressed upon him, remains.

 Besides navigating a familial minefield and keeping his nose clean, Eugene's greatest challenge and most pronounced personality quirk is a raging case of being pubescent and horny. His rabid lust is both humorous (Peeping Tom fantasies) and disturbing (bordering on incest). His only aspirations in life are to see (maybe one day touch) naked women and to play for the New York Yankees.

Brighton Beach Memoirs recreates the rich neighborhood flavor of ethnic ghetto Brooklyn and delivers a precise sense of time and location. Director Gene Saks, who helmed Simon classics such as Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple, has a very comfortable handle on bringing Simon's stage into a more liberating framework. He allows the play's words and characters to be the focus, and the camera to merely hang around as witness.
The general measure of audience enjoyment for a film based on Simon has everything to do with one’s tolerance for the playwright. He either will bring a smile to your face and a soft warmth to your heart, or he'll do those things and in addition have your eyes rolling. Neil Simon is basically the John Hughes of modern stage drama. Prolific, sometimes genius, but in a way that only sniffs true art. There is never that glaring statement of immortality. In a world where Simon’s contemporary David Mamet writes dialogue with a gritty edginess that makes us think his words are real and human, Simon’s set ups can be deemed cheeky and cheesy, even when his material is quite somber and dark. Simon’s unquestionable gift, which is his mass appeal, is equally his curse.

In Brighton Beach Memoirs, the conflicts and turmoil are more or less the stuff of your average three day Yom Tov without sufficient Bartenura Moscato. But Simon's reputation as a lightweight is not a result of his inability to orchestrate chaos – he does that extremely well – rather, he suffers for his tidy endings.

With all the things spiraling out of control in the Jerome household, it is unsatisfying from a dramatic point of view that everything wraps us so seamlessly. In the final scene, all matters having been charmingly resolved following individual moments of confession and convalescence, the Jerome’s gather around the kitchen table to read a letter that says the Polish cousins have escape and are on route to America. Although the family is cramped and crowded and breathing down each other’s necks and money is scarce and tensions can go code orange at any moment, where the Polish cousins will stay and who will welcome them with open arms upon arrival is not a question.

The curtains close with a lingering sense of the most Jewish sentiment of all.

10. No one can pronounce your name despite the fact that it's written on your shirt. (name: Shmuely = "Go Shmucky!")
9.  Gatorade becomes officially kosher after mile 1  (sakanat nefashos, no?)
8. You feel "at home" running through Chasidic Brooklyn, until someone asks if you put on teffilin yet
7. Physically you felt a hell of a lot worse at Neliahon Yom Kippur
6. You realize the term "Anu Ratzim, vHaim Ratzim" suddenly refers to the same finish line
5. You expect 5minutes off your time due to required hugs/kisses/photos with random cousins by your mother
4. You awkwardly try to let on to a girl named Batsheva that your Jewish: "Hey, um, is this running-goo pareve?"
3. You find it odd yet completely normal to hear a Chasid cheer "Shkoyach!"
2. You haven't shvitzed this much since your cousin's wedding in Monsey when the AC went out
1. You know why 26 is the gematria of God's name - because at that mile, you've never thanked God so much in your life

Prime Grill to open on 85th and Broadway. It will include two party rooms, a lounge, a full bar and be open on Shabbat for pre-paid meals.  The theme will be Japanese infused with main courses around the $25 range. Plans are to open around Thanksgiving.  

My Most Favorite will be taking over the Nargila Grill/Dougies spot on 72nd street

Additionally, Circa Downtown reopened yesterday @ 111 Fulton Street.

8. YENTL
 
Barbra Streisand, as writer, director, producer, vocalist, star, and all around supernatural force behind the adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story about a young independent Jewish woman who poses as a male yeshiva student to fully realize her love of Talmud, deserves all the credit and all the blame for the charming yet disturbing, courageous yet shallow, poignant yet somehow uninvolving film experience that is Yentl.

First, the credit. Anything that moves the feminist agenda in relation to orthodox Judaism into the spotlight is an imperative accomplishment. When Yentl laments her inability to study Talmud or actively participate in ritual Judaism; when she longingly stares at her father at prayer from her spectator seats in the balcony; when a bookseller calls out to the crowd "Holy books for men! Picture books for women!" the character reflects all the bitter frustration Jewish women must have felt and contained ever since the day Sarah watched Abraham take Hagar into his tent.

Though the western world has made tremendous strides in the past half century in terms of women's rights and equality, the eastern world (and its religions) remain a seemingly unconquerable frontier. The three most formidable representations of capable orthodox women competing - Yentl, Nechama Leibowitz, and Blu Greenberg - each made their strongest case over twenty years ago. No one has staunchly assumed the mantle or taken up the unpopular cause. Nowadays, if anyone appears to be fighting for religious women in Jewish law, it’s “progressive” male scholars trying to broach a controversial subject. One might cynically suggest, judging by the overwhelming silence, that Jewish women have grown satisfied with the under the radar freedom and anonymity of second class.

Throughout the film, Yentl soliloquizes her volcanic feelings of confusion and resentment in song, and although she is from a shtetl in Europe, she sounds a lot like a certain diva from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Yentl is not so much a character as a means to an end for one ambitious and well intentioned filmmaker. A filmmaker who likely witnessed and experienced a culture of male dominance and female compliance throughout her formative years. Streisand belts out, with passion and dramatic flair, her emotional inner turmoil. She does so to the fields, the constellations, the spirits of the dead, and finally the ocean. Yentl is never alone with such a voice and such a heart. And her accusations are not necessarily venomous or disparaging. She approaches the material with a sense of reason and justice, appealing to the powers that be to realize past wrongs and make amends.
In the anthem Where Is It Written, the underlying and essential theme of the film is mapped out.

Why have eyes that see and arms that reach unless you're meant to know there's something more? If not to hunger for the meaning of it all? Then tell me what a soul is for? Where is it written what it is I'm meant to be, that I can't dare to have the chance to pick the fruit of every tree or have my share of every sweet-imagined possibility?

Well, on paper and on screen that is a sound protest, however, if someone is truly wondering where in orthodox Jewish texts it is written what a woman is meant to be, what her eyes and arms are for, there are plenty of sources to point to; none providing the answer Ms. Streisand is looking for. In Judaism, it is not that a woman’s status has been ignored, but rather that it has been so thoroughly defined and explained and justified by pretense. With Yentl, the character alone is nothing more than an extraordinary exception, and since she is depicted as a well versed and learned woman, making her oblivious to the halachic position is untenable. She should never have asked: Where is it written? But the more confounding and acute: Why is it written?

And really, the lack of an accurately phrased argument trips up Yentl as it does most films aiming to depict and comprehend authentic orthodox Jewish culture. Yentl is the kind of film where an allegedly pious scholar has romantic physical contact with a woman without repercussions or excuse. The sort of film where a deep, challenging passage of Talmud (which could just as easily been referred to as “Gemarah” to score some authenticity points) is represented on a number of occasions by simplistic philosophy straight out of Pirkei Avot. It is the kind of contrived affair where a woman can dress up as man and live for a long period in a confined and close knit yeshiva society and fail to be discovered. Then do the same for months while married! All these breaches in credibility are acceptable sacrifices in order to allow the story to play out and engage the audience (in fact, the Once Upon a Time opening suggests a fable), but for the critical audience – orthodox Jews who are being asked to examine a troubling situation – such inconsistencies do the movement no favors.

While the movie is on target in terms of noble intent, so much about Yentl is self defeating, and the legendary ego of Streisand can safely be deemed the culprit. A valid position is delivered in such a self-indulgent showcase way that one can’t but scoff at the message. In one set piece after another Streisand stares off into the distance to melodically mourn her woe is me role as subjugated woman. The songs wander, rise and fall, swell, but never manage to strike a nerve. It makes you wonder whether Streisand is trying to stake a claim in the world for women, or just for one woman.
Once Yentl’s father dies (providing cause for her to sing the inconic Streisand ballad, Papa Can You Hear Me?) she flees home, masquerading as a boy to study in yeshiva. Streisand at forty was probably just a bit too old for the part, as Anshel (Yentl’s male alter-ego) in real life would have been spotted as a transvestite by even the most myopic bochur in seder. Instead, Avigdor (a gushing Mandy Patinkin), the yeshiva’s prize (yet renegade) pupil latches onto Anshel as a chavrusah and best friend. An uncomfortable love triangle worthy of Shakespeare ensues as Anshel falls for Avigdor who is engaged to and enamored with Hadass (Oscar nominated Amy Irving), but Avigdor is also strangely drawn to Anshel in a way that is not exactly kosher. In a movie that continuously panders and generally chooses shtick over substance, it is actually thrilling to find that the character of Hadass is presented as a fully realized human being who represents the notion that, given the proper nurturing environment, even the most hopelessly deferential woman will express some hidden sparks of autonomy and individualism. And perhaps this unintentional byproduct is the legacy of Yentl. The feminist agenda is best argued, not by the title character who boldly and melodramatically espouses grandiloquent positions making us want cover our ears, but by quiet, unassuming Hadass, who just might have drawn the men in before surprising them with her sudden metamorphosis.
Spoken like a true chauvinist.            

The status quo for women has changed and will change because today girls in yeshiva are educated equally if not better than the boys. Yentl’s era is certainly alive and well in some Jewish communities, but evolution has a knack for taking us to the right place. In some stubborn circles, the process just takes longer.

Despite its faulty transmission, the Jewish community should see and discuss the issues raised in Yentl, but Streisand’s biggest blunder may have been making the film a quasi-musical. Those most in need of seeing it won’t be permitted due to Kol Isha.

9.       Multitasking while saying a bracha is a no-no

8.       Simcha Guidelines emphasize less focus on external appearances

7.       Literal interpretation: "Ein mikra yotzei midei pshuto"

6.       Brothers failed to recognize Yosef's face

5.       Loud shofar blasts meant to startle and produce anxiety

4.       Avraham, take your ONLY son, the one you LOVE, YITZCHAK. Do not misunderstand!

3.       And you Lavan, let me communicate this clearly: it's RACHEL, your LITTLE DAUGHTER.

2.       Rocking behaviors encouraged, especially during shemona esrei

1.   Took Rav Preida's talmid 400 times to "get it"

To increase your awareness of ASPERGER'S SYNDROME, visit http://autism.about.com/od/aspergerssyndrome/a/adultsaspergers.htm#

You or your loved one may not just be quirky - maybe it's Asperger's.

Rules of the Sukkah (with numbered footnotes)

You can build it very small (1)

You can build it very tall (2)

You can build it very large (3)

You can build it on a barge

You can build it on a ship (4)

Or on a roof but please don't slip (5)

You can build it in an alley (6)

You shouldn't build it in a valley (7)

You can build it on a wagon (8)

You can build it on a dragon (9)

You can make the skakh of wood (10)

Woud you, could you, yes you should

Make the skakh from leaves of tree

You shouldn't bend it at the knee (11)

Build your Sukkah tall or short

No Sukkah is built in the Temple Court

You can build it somewhat soon

You cannot build it in the month of June (12)

If your Sukkah is well made

You'll have the right amount of shade (13)

You can build it very wide

You can not build it on its side

Build if your name is Jim

Or Bob or Sam or even Tim

Build it if your name is Sue (14)

Do yu build it, yes you do!

From the Sukkah you can roam

But you should treat it as your home (15)

You can invite some special guests

Don't stay in it if there are pests

You can sleep upon some rugs

Don't you build it where there's bugs

In the Sukkah you should sit

And eat and drink but never ...

If in the Sukkah it should rain

To stay there would be such a pain (16)

And if it should be very cold

Stay there only if you're bold

So build a Sukkah one and all

Make it large or make it small

Sukkah rules are short and snappy

Enjoy Sukkot, rejoice be happy.

Footnotes:

1. Maimonides (RMBM) Mishne Torah, Hilchot Sukkah, Chapter 4, Section 1. The minimum height of a Sukkah is 10 tefachim. A tefach is a measure of the width of the four fingers of one's hand. My hand is 3 1/4 inches wide for a minimum Sukkah height of 32 1/2 inches. The minimum allowable width is 7 tefachim by 7 tefachim. This would result in a Sukkah of 22 3/4 inches by 22 3/4 inches.  

2. The maximum height is 20 Amot. An Amah is the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. My Amah is 15 1/2 inches for a maximum height of 25 feet. Others say that 30 feet is the maximum.

3. According to RMBM the Sukkah can be built to a width of several miles. Shulchan Aruch also says there is no limit on the size of the width.

4. RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 6.

5. RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 11. RMBM states that one may construct a Sukkah by wedging poles in the four corners of the roof and suspending scakh from the poles. The walls of the building underneath are considered to reach upward to the edge of the scakh.

6. RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 8-10 discusses the ins and outs of building your Sukkah in an alley or passageway.

7. There is a location referred to in the Talmud called Ashtarot Karnayim. According to the discussion there are two hills, with a valley in between where the Sun does not reach. Therefore it is impossible to sit in the shade of the roof of the Sukkah. I can't find the reference...hopefully next year.

8. RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 6. You can go into a Sukkah built on a wagon or a ship even on Yom Tov.

9. RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 6. OK, RMBM says a camel but dragon rhymes with wagon a lot better, don't you agree. Anyway, RMBM says you can build your Sukkah on a wagon or in the crown of a tree, but you can't go into it on Yom Tov. There is a general rule against riding a beast or ascending into the crown of a tree on Yom Tov.

10. Chapter 5 deals with the rules for the scakh. Basically, you can use that which has grown from the ground, and is completely detached from the ground. So, for example, you cannot bend the branches of a tree over the Sukkah to form the scakh. But you can cut the branches from a tree and use them as scakh.

11. This would be a violation of the rule cited in the prior footnote.

12. Shulchan Aruch, Hilchot Sukkah, Perek 636, Section 1. The Sukkah should not be built sooner than 30 days before the Hag. However, if the structure is built prior to 30 days, as long as something new is added within the 30 days, the Sukkah is kosher.

13. Of course it's a well known rule that you must sit in the shade from the roof of the Sukkah and not in the shade that may be cast by the walls. It seems that this might affect the height of the walls, depending on the longitude of the location where you are building your Sukkah.

14. Technically, women, servants and minors are exempt from the Mitzvah of Sukkah. In our day we hope we know better than to read out half the Jewish people from the observance of Mitzvot. Of course, that's just a personal opinion of the author.

15. RMBM ibid Chapter 6, Section 6 explains that you should eat, drink and live in the Sukkah for the 7 days as you live in your own home. One should not even take a nap outside of the Sukkah.

16. RMBM ibid, Section 10. If it rains one should go into the house. How does one know if it is raining hard enough? If sufficient raindrops fall through the scakh (roof covering) and into the food so that the food is spoiled - go inside!