I passed by Dougie's kosher barbecue on my way home from work tonight. For those of you who aren't familiar with Dougie's, it's part of the shtetl of kosher eateries and judaica shops lining West 72nd Street between Broadway and West End Avenue. When I was in college and we all made a habit of ordering take-out from the cheapest, greasiest hole-in-the-wall Chinese delivery joints we could find, there was always some orthodox kid who wanted to order from Dougie's. Every once in a while the rest of us would oblige, and we'd all chew silently on leathery meat while our orthodox buddies went on about how the buffalo wings were the best on the planet (as if they had a frame of reference). I can respect a person who takes their religion seriously, but kosher food just plain sucks.

Anyway, I'm walking past Dougie's, and I nearly run smack into a big blue plastic tarp wrapped around a bunch of eight-foot-high aluminum poles in the middle of the sidewalk. I round the last pole, and I see rows of tables and chairs set up within three tarp walls, where people are sitting and eating their dinners. And it hits me. This week, Jews (that is, more observant Jews than myself) are celebrating Sukkot, a/k/a/ the Festival of Huts (I did not make this up). Basically, you have to build a little hut outside your house, and sleep in it and eat meals in it. The hut has to have at least three free standing walls, and the roof must be constructed in such a way that stars can be seen through it. When I was a kid, we built up the walls of our deck with wooden lattices and covered the top with pine branches. Ours was a respectable hut.

There's an obvious shortage of outdoor decks on the Upper West Side. But the neighborhood is a link in the historical chain of Jewish migration from the Lower East Side to Riverdale and on to Westchester, and the Jews who remain here need huts this week. Dougie's to the rescue! If they can convince my old college buddy that their gray rubbery wings are God's own mannah, I guess it's not such a strech to build a sacred space out of debris from a construction site. I just hope nobody's taking them seriously enough to camp out on the sidewalk on West 72nd Street. Hag Sameach, y'all.