Baltimore’s Accomplished Sukkos

What do you get when you combine 1 holiday, 4 trucks, 13 bochurim, 37 arranged visits to families and businesses, forty dozen danishes, 250 soda cans, and 270 hours? You get the Chabad of Park Heights Sukkah Mobiles.

Throughout the intermediate days of the holiday of Sukkot, the Sukkah mobiles spread across the Baltimore area and provided the opportunity for more than 1600 people to shake the Lulav and Esrog.

Under the direction of Rabbi Elchonon Lisbon, director of Chabad of Park Heights, and Sukkah Mobile coordinators Ari Abramowitz and Shmuel Rothstein, the mobile team started weeks in advance preparing for the holiday.

“Making full time schedules for the four trucks took hours of work,” said Abramowitz, “however, seeing the smiles on people’s faces when they shake the Lulav and Esrog, or when they are given the chance to eat in the Sukkah, which otherwise they would not be able to do, makes every second more than worth it.”

Many thanks go to Yitzi Kaner, Mordechai Goldstein, Reuven Brody and Shlomo Simenowitz, who put in many hours to help make the Sukkah mobiles a huge success.

When asked how the team kept up their stamina, they said that it was the people’s excitement that kept them going. The fact that people came across the street to the Sukkah mobiles asking to come in to do the mitzvot of the holiday of Sukkot, was enough to give them the strength to go on. Their excitement for Judaism was better than any amount of Red Bull.