The Sukkah in the Sky

The elevator doors open on the roof of a twelve-story building in Tzfat, and eight police officers emerge under a burden of wooden beams.

Below them, the city spreads across the hills of Eretz Yisroel, a clear line of sight stretching a hundred kilometers into Jordan and Syria.

Up here, the view is spectacular. Up here, there’s also work to do.

Chaim Sebbag* watches with tears in his eyes. Within minutes, his sukkah is standing. But it’s only when you learn ВОЗ asked the officers to come that this scene makes sense.

A body that won’t cooperate

For forty years, Chaim and his wife built their sukkah together on their rooftop, lugging the wooden panels up twelve flights of stairs and assembling them by hand. When Chaim’s wife passed away, he kept going.

Then his body stopped cooperating.

“As my body ages,” Chaim explains, “my muscles don’t work. If I’m not careful, injury is close at hand.”

It’s the third year Colel Chabad sent people to build his sukkah. And this year, Rabbi Yoram Mauda, the directorof Colel Chabad in Tzfat, arranged for an unexpected team of police officers to assemble the entire structure with practiced efficiency.

“Within minutes, they built it much better than I ever did,” says Chaim.

And when Sukkos ended, two young men came to take the sukkah apart and store it for the following year.

“There’s no way I could have done it myself,” says Chaim simply.

Immediate help

The Markowitz family’s troubles arrived without warning and didn’t stop at one.

Yosef*, a widower raising his daughter in Tzfat, lives frugally on his small pension. Two months ago, his daughter knocked a pot of boiling water onto her foot. Third-degree burns covered the sole, so crutches weren’t an option

She’s been wheelchair-bound ever since.

A month later, Yosef developed a serious case of cellulitis on his leg.
“Extra medical expenses are outside the budget,” he explains. But alternative medications and taxi fares tospecialists added up to 400 dollars – money he doesn’t have.

He contacted Colel Chabad of Tzfat.
“Rabbi Mauda is a busy man,” he says, “but he provided those funds immediately.”

And that was only the beginning. For Sukkos, the organization arranged to have Yosef’s sukkah erected, provided new schach, subsidized a lulav and esrog, and added $200 in food vouchers.

“They made such a difference.”

Everything, at once

What Colel Chabad offers isn’t a single service, but the full range of what a family might need: a sukkah built, a medical bill covered, food on the table, Yom Tov made possible.

Colel Chabad helps the elderly, widows, families in crisis, and anyone facing challenges too crushing to carry alone.

And the help is swift and sensitive.

When the call came from Yosef, funds arrived immediately.
When Chaim needed his sukkah built, Rabbi Mauda sent volunteers who made sure every wooden panel was accounted for.

Both Chaim and Yosef live in Tzfat, but Colel Chabad extends this type of support to families across the country. People across Eretz Yisroel can celebrate Yom Tov – in their own sukkahs – thanks to Colel Chabad.

And back on a high rooftop in Tzfat, a sukkah stands ready. The city shimmers below, and the man who couldn’t
have done the job himself didn’t have to.

Colel Chabad made sure it got done for him. Now Sukkos can begin.