It’s Sukkah-Man

By: Larry Gordon

Steven Litton is driving through Pennsylvania when he thinks about calling me. I don’t have his name attached to his phone number, just the word, “sukkah.” And when it lights up, I know it’s him. Sometimes I’m able to answer the phone when he calls and sometimes, I’m not.

Celebrating the chag with a Litton Sukkah

And guess what? Sometimes when I call him, he answers after a few rings and sometimes he doesn’t. The thing is, whether we call one another or not, I know what he wants and he knows what I need.

When he calls me, he usually wants to know what page his Litton Sukkah ad is going to be placed on in any given pre-yom tov issue. When I call him, it’s usually because I want to know when he plans on putting our sukkah up.

As we speak, I ask him where he’s headed and he tells me he’s outside Philadelphia while on a 13-hour road trip from Chicago to the Five Towns. His father, Evan, who lives here in Lawrence, is in the sukkah-mobile with him.

Steven lives in Denver most of the year, but he’s been migrating east every summer since he was a teen to build people’s sukkahs before he began to actually manufacture them. After years of putting up sukkahs by other companies, Steven and his brother Jonathan had an epiphany: they decided to create their own masterpiece sukkah that married beauty with function and concierge service. They decided to create a sukkah for life. Which means, their sukkah is so strong and unique, it will last forever, or as close to forever as you can get with Hashem’s help.

Today, it’s easy to spot a Litton Sukkah. There are many different kinds of sukkahs on the market, and they all serve the same purpose. But somehow, a Litton Sukkah enhances the mitzvah, and just by displaying this particular sukkah on your front porch or driveway, the result will be neighbors stopping by to comment on the beauty of your sukkah.

I don’t know if you recall, but if you’ve been around for a while and experienced a few of these yomim tovim, you are also aware of how this mitzvah has evolved over the decades. In fact, it’s even a bit entertaining to reflect on how the sukkahs we use over the chag have changed over the years.

As a child growing up in Crown Heights, I recall our first sukkah being made out of a series of old doors somehow connected in some do-hickey fashion by what we used to call a handyman. Okay, a handyperson.

The floor of that sukkah was also comprised of a few old doors, which covered over a grassy area which became muddy if it rained. So, a few years later, my parents finally decided to pave over that grassy area so that for the next few years we had a decent cement floor in the sukkah.

It was also around this time that Crown Heights was changing, and not for the better, and it became too risky to have our sukkah in the backyard, which was adjacent to an alleyway that was a scary place to be at night.

So, we moved our sukkah to the front porch. Let me reminisce for a few lines about that great big wooden sukkah that we sat in during those happy yomim tovim of our youth. This major piece of lumber was holed up in our garage all year long. It was something to construct those heavy walls, and it was quite a chore to lug those sukkah walls out of the garage in the back of the houses and get them up to the front porch.

It was a fairly large sukkah, with room for our family as well as our tenant’s family. As the families grew, it got a little tight in there and my father insisted that our tenant’s family have their yom tov seudah first and when they concluded their feast, we would begin ours.

The problem was that even though we were being patient and waited, they took their time singing zemiroswhile my father paced around, looking out the window and into the sukkah to see if they were up to dessert yet or not. When he finally saw the compote on the table, he signaled us to start moving in. It was an overt way of kindly communicating that enough was enough and chag sameach.

We’ve come a long way since then, and while there are still a few weeks until the chag begins, there are sukkahs going up as you read these words. Just to set the record straight, I spoke with Steve Litton on Tuesday so I could report on his sukkah-building schedule and travels accurately.

It’s true that he drove from Denver to put up about 30 to 40 sukkahs in St. Louis and Chicago, but he told me he had to first drive to New York, where his warehouse is located, to get supplies for those Midwest sukkahs.

So, let’s review. He first drove his truck from Denver to New York, then he drove from New York to St. Louis and then Chicago. After that, most of his work will be on the east coast. He will be busy erecting a large number of sukkahs here in the Five Towns as well as in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. He mentioned that last week, he put up a large shul sukkah in Teaneck, New Jersey along with a number of residential sukkahs in that densely populated Orthodox community.

While we’re on the subject of New Jersey, Steven says his crews are also busy with sukkahs in Lakewood, Jackson, Toms River, and Deal.

If you want to know what distinguishes these Litton sukkahs from others, you can read all about it on their website. The material they use for their sukkahs is called Sunbrella. It’s a smooth, attractive looking type of material that dries quickly after it rains, and when you purchase a Litton Sukkah, it comes with a nice-looking lighting system and some good-looking schach that rolls out across the width and length of the sukkah quite easily.

It’s important to be mindful that after a deeply meaningful and spiritual Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we take up part of our residence outside under the stars as a way of indicating that we place ourselves under Hashem’s great firmament, under His protective care. Our sukkahs represent the Clouds of Glory that accompanied the Jewish nation through our 40 years in the desert, providing protection to our people at all times, then as well as today.

I don’t know if the Litton family understood the important role they would play in our observance of this great and beautiful mitzvah. But here they are working around the clock so we can enjoy our yom tov, and they are getting it done like no one else. 

Read more of Larry Gordon’s articles at 5TJT.com. Follow 5 Towns Jewish Times on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for updates and live videos. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome at 5TJT.com and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.