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Jewish Group Hopes to Unite Community With 'Sukkahwood' Art Festival

By Carolina Pichardo | October 4, 2017 6:48pm
 Chabad of Inwood is launching the first Sukkahwood community art festival to celebrate the holiday Sukkot with the rest of the community.
Chabad of Inwood is launching the first Sukkahwood community art festival to celebrate the holiday Sukkot with the rest of the community.
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Kate Eggleston

INWOOD — Visitors to Inwood Hill Park on Sunday may spot some temporary dwellings created by artists in observation of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

Sukkahwood 2017 will feature six different art installations in the park by artists from New York City, New Jersey and Maine, said said Rabbi Herschel Hartz, founder of Chabad of Inwood, the group behind the event.

A sukkah is a hut that people stay in during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, Hartz said, and many of the installations will be representative of the celebration.

“There are two goals for this,” the rabbi explained. “Sukkot is a Jewish holiday very few people know about, and we’re trying to popularize this holiday, and make it into something people can learn about. And the second thing, is to make this into a community art festival, because the holiday has so many universal themes, like for example, temporary housing and reliance upon each other and upon our community. I think the event itself has a lot of opportunities to build the community.”

Hartz said he got the idea for the event when visiting a similar sukkah in Union Square almost seven years ago.

“I’ve always wanted to do this event in Inwood Hill Park,” he said. “We’re looking to now build the roots so that we could do this in the years to come.”

The event is sponsored by several local organizations, including the Partnership for Parks, Columbia University Medical Center Government and Community Affairs and New York Presbyterian Allen Hospital, who each provided the group with different small grants. These helped fund the stipends and awards that will be given to the artists at the end of the event, Hartz said.

Sukkahwood also partnered with several local nonprofits and groups, such as City Harvest, Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance and Scribble Art Workshop, to have them provide different classes, products and samples of their work during the celebration.

"It's an opportunity for us to share different cultures, because we're going to have different people of all walks of life at this event," Hartz said. 

Sukkahwood will take place Sunday, Oct. 8 from noon to 4 p.m. in Inwood Hill Park on 215th Street and Indian Road.