Six, if you include the pareve ones.

Sukkot is my favorite Jewish holiday. (Don’t hold me to this; when Chanuka starts to approach, I’ll deny I ever said such a thing.)

It might be because building and eating in a sukkah is kind of like camping; it might be because the biblical commandment to be happy is actually referring to this holiday; it might be because my birthday is on Sukkot.

It might be because of the weather; it might be because of the high Chol HaMo’ed to Yom Tov ratio; it might be because it’s immediately followed by Simchat Torah.

Maybe it’s the memories of that splintery wooden sukkah we had when I was little, or all those Sukkah Hops with all that free candy corn (we did not have candy corn in the house growing up), or that year that I decided was totally going to sleep in the sukkah until I finally gave in to the cold at 3 AM, or when we specifically invited cat-allergic friends for lunch on Sukkot and then it rained (take that, Alanis!).

(We had cats; that’s why it’s relevant.)

(This was in America, where cats don’t usually hang out in sukkahs.)

(By the way, did you know that Google returns 10,700 results for “Take that, Alanis?” I bet she wishes her name were Jane. Better yet, I bet she wishes she had named that song “Unfortunate.”)

* * * * *

Sometimes I walk around outside on Sukkot and note all of the balconies that could have a sukkah on it and don’t. Sometimes I walk around outside when it’s not Sukkot and I imagine, for each eligible balcony I see, how many people a sukkah there could seat.

Is this something that other people do?

I’m just saying, if someone offered me an apartment in Jerusalem with a mirpeset sukkah at an affordable price, I’d probably accept it sight unseen. If it didn’t have enough bedrooms, we could all just sleep in the sukkah. (Year-round.)

But it’s not like Jerusalem doesn’t have enough sukkot. Every single food place in the center of town has its own sukkah. Nowadays, they’re all customized and branded with the logo of the establishment they belong to (Spaceballs: The Sukkah!), but a few years ago, it wasn’t like that. They used to all have the generic walls, so you would have the fun experience of buying food, then bringing it to the nearest sukkah to eat it, and all of a sudden, somebody would be yelling at you, “What are you doing?! Get out of there with your ice café! This is a meat sukkah!”

Oh yeah, of course. I totally have two separate sukkot at home, too. Four, actually–I have another set for Pesach.

(Man, the people who were upset that my last post didn’t seem to have a point are going to be really annoyed by this one.)