- I have a minhag to come up with a list of minhagim for each yom tov that might not actually be minhagim, but that my kids might think are minhagim if I don’t actually say something at some point.
- I have a minhag to have one new idea for the construction of my sukkah every year that does not at all take into account the laws of physics.
- I have a minhag to build my sukkah as far away from the house as possible, because that’s where the patio is.
- I have a minhag to constantly come up with excuses not to sleep in the sukkah.
- I have a minhag to ask my kids to help build the sukkah, by which I mean “hold the walls that I’ve already put together so they don’t fall over until I’ve finished all four walls.” Then it can fall over.
- My parents have a minhag to label every piece of the sukkah with numbers, so they can tell at a glance if they’ve installed one of the pieces upside-down. And then to hang pictures over the numbers. Some years we walk in and the pictures are very low.
- I have a minhag to put the schach poles on the sukkah – which is sitting on my slightly-slanted patio – in a way that the poles will roll off one at a time over the course of Yom Tov.
- I have a minhag to weigh down my schach mat with loose pieces of wood that I throw on haphazardly and hope they don’t come crashing through the mat when they land. This way, instead of having the schach mat blow around the neighborhood, we will have the schach mat and some random two-by-fours blowing around the neighborhood.
- I have a minhag to learn Meseches Sukkah and wonder why people are having all these shaylos about putting four-post beds in a sukkah when the best I’m allowed to bring in is one of those folding beds that folds as you sleep. Or an air mattress that is great for if I want to sleep on the floor, but not right away.
- I have a minhag to hang fake fruit in my sukkah, and I don’t know why. Are we trying to fool the bees? My mother-in-law?
- I have a minhag to hang both wall decorations and ceiling decorations. Just in case we’re not yotzeh with one or the other. This is despite the fact that we have zero ceiling decorations in our house unless you count old balloons, and that if we wanted the wall decorations in the sukkah to be like the ones in our house, we’d hang a calendar, a clock, pictures of our kids, thousand-piece puzzles that my wife put together, a Mizrach sign, and a fire extinguisher. And our ceiling decorations would be a single balloon, a smoke detector, and a ceiling fan. (If you set the fan on high, the schach mat takes off.)
- I have a minhag that it not occur to me to sweep the leaves off the patio until after we put up the sukkah.
- I have a minhag to forget how to make lulav bands. Every year.
- I have a minhag to doubt my abilities to pick a good esrog, because I’ve looked at all the picture seforim with the esrogim that have chunks taken out of them, and I’ve never seen those issues in real life. Am I not looking hard enough? Is this like when you’re checking lettuce for bugs and you don’t find any so you start second-guessing whether you know what a bug looks like?
- Even though the hadassim are supposed to be slightly taller than the aravos, every dealer I’ve ever bought from has a minhag to sell aravos that are considerably longer than the lulav.
- We have a minhag that besides for Kiddush and maybe Motzie, there is no moment when everyone in the family is in the sukkah. There is always someone in the house for some reason.
- In the town where my in-laws live, the kids have a minhag to go from house to house looking at people’s sukkahs to see if there’s any candy in them.
- We have a minhag to spend a significant part of the meals on Sukkos – more than any other yom tov – talking about the weather.
- My wife has a minhag to forget how to shake the arbah minim every year because she grew up with a different minhag, even though our kids all know how to do it and she’s been married to me at this point for longer than any of our kids have been around.
- I have a minhag to wrap my hadassim and aravos in wet newspapers wrapped in foil. My father’s minhag is wet newspapers wrapped in that tall plastic bag that the lulav comes in, but I was matir neder on that minhag. Mainly because it was near impossible to shake the bundle of wet newspaper in and out of the bag every morning.
- I have a minhag to keep my lulavim on top of the breakfront. This minhag started when the kids were little and I was worried that they might play with them, and now even though all my sons have their own esrogim and lulavim, that they can play with in shul, we still keep the lulavim up there, just so I have to be the one to take them down every morning.
- On Pesach, I have the minhag to keep the matzah boxes in that same spot. For those same reasons. The rest of the year, the spot is for boxes of partially-done puzzles that we keep under the table pad.
- During Hoshanos, our chazzan has a minhag to disappear out of the room into the hallways part of the way through the circuit so no one can hear him, and the rest of us have a minhag to keep repeating what we think he’s saying based on the people around us, but who knows.
- Everyone in my shul has a minhag, during Hoshanos, to suddenly reveal how bad they are at driving; and merge without signaling, pass people on the right, cut across the median, rubberneck, look down while in motion, bump into each other, and do everything they can so that over the course of one “Hakafah”, I’ve made it three feet. But somehow the chazzan, who is in the same train as me, has made it all the way around the shul, out into the hallway, across the parking lot, and back.
- For every meal of Chol Hamoed, I have a minhag to come out to the sukkah, sit down, and then remember that I forgot one thing in the house. Such as a plate.
- We have a minhag to not decide what we’re doing on Chol Hamoed until after chatzos. Of that day.
- I have a minhag to put up at least 4 different decorations about the Ushpizin on all 4 walls and then still forget to say Ushpizin about half the time, particularly on Chol Hamoed. Not that I think Moshe Rabbeinu wants to join me for a single slice of pizza standing up. With no plate. Surrounded by wet chairs.
- I have a minhag to wonder why I didn’t knock a single leaf off my aravah bundle when my smallest son got almost all of them off his. Is it because he’s closer to the ground? Is mine broken?
- My shul has a minhag to do that thing on Simchas Torah where the chazzan gets up to sing “Ha’aderes V’emunah” and someone else gets behind him and sticks his arms through the chazzan’s armpits and pretends that the chazzan’s arms are acting independently of his brain. But aside from wiping the chazzan’s brow and doing Hawaiian dance motions and adjusting his tie a hundred times, the back guy is not sure what to do with the joke.
- The chazzan also has a minhag to sing “Ein Adir Ka’Hashem” in an extremely racist Sephardi accent. This is of course hilarious, despite it being the same joke every year. And it’s perfectly safe to do, because all the Sephardim specifically go to Sephardi shuls that day, because I bet they dance very differently. The songs are definitely different. I’ve never been to a Sephardi shul for Simchas Torah, but I assume they sing this song in a racist Ashkenazi accent.
- We have a minhag that, for “Seu Shearim Rosheichem,” we dance by having two rows of people with their arms over each other’s shoulders come toward each other, almost crash, and then back up over a kid who’s trying to watch, and then two rows of people perpendicular to them take the opportunity to come in, almost crash, and repeat the process, until someone comes into the middle with no jacket and a tie that’s flopping around and directs traffic.
- Where was this guy during Hoshanos?
- Our shul has a minhag to throw the kids up for Moshe Emes, and the guy who can throw his kid the highest gets to do the backwards hagbah.
- I have a minhag to make excuses not to put away my sukkah if I think the pieces are even a tiny bit wet. Unfortunately, I start davening for rain before I get a chance to take down my sukkah. This is by design.
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.
