Dangerous Pirate Sukkah Construction Surges Ahead of Sukkot in Israel

Ahead of the Sukkot holiday, construction activity in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods reaches its peak. Housing shortages and overcrowding in large families lead to creative solutions, as the sukkah often serves as an actual extra room for the family. However, behind the hammers and nails lies an entire industry of pirate construction, devoid of supervision or permits, posing a genuine mortal danger to celebrants.

Every year, even before the holiday begins, Magen David Adom teams encounter dozens of cases of severe injuries—not only from collapsing sukkot but primarily during the stages of construction, assembly, and hanging decorations, explains Dr. Shafir Botner, Chief Paramedic of MDA. Last year, a tragic case was even recorded where a man lost his life after falling from a height. Urban density in cities like Jerusalem and Bnei Brak leads people to build sukkot on roofs, balconies, and improvised building extensions. Climbing unstable ladders, bending over railings, and using hazardous surfaces often end in severe falls. It is enough to fall from a ladder at a height of just three meters to suffer severe head, chest, and back trauma and complex fractures, while even the seemingly simple action of hanging decorations on a balcony can end in a serious fall.

The Hidden Electrical and Fire Hazards

Alongside the danger of falling from a height, Dr. Botner emphasizes another severe danger accompanying the holiday eve: electrocution and fires resulting from pirate electrical connections and hazardous placements. Every citizen suddenly becomes an electrician and improvises lighting connections inside the sukkah, he warns. In one case, we encountered a person who lifted palm fronds to place on a ground-level sukkah, and during the lift struck an electrical cable and suffered severe electrocution. People also set up sukkot near electrical panels, gas cylinders, or under low power lines without understanding the magnitude of the danger.

In 2021, the floor of a sukkah built at a height of about two meters in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem collapsed under it. As a result of the collapse of the structure, which was built on scaffolding, four people were slightly injured, including three women in their 30s and a child of about five. Already then, we wrote about the danger even before the incident, and unfortunately, it did not prevent it, but it remains necessary to continue highlighting the danger and hoping for the best.

The Flash Sukkah Phenomenon

Tzvi (a pseudonym), a contractor operating in the city of Bnei Brak, exposes what happens behind the scenes and divides construction into several types. Sukkot built on the ground are considered by him to be "less frightening" since they are not prone to falling. These sukkot are sometimes built of blocks, or out of necessity from metal, shutters, and even asbestos. However, most of these sukkot are unsafe and undergo no approval process with the fire department or the municipality. In buildings where all residents are ultra-Orthodox, there is mutual consideration and encouragement. The contractor arrives with building materials and finishes setting up the sukkah within a day or two at most. In cases where none of the neighbors report it to the municipality, the sukkot remain permanently in place, serve as a storage room throughout the year, and are converted back into a sukkah ahead of the holiday. In contrast, in mixed buildings where secular and religious people live, it is impossible to build freely out of fear that neighbors will report it.

A unique and interesting phenomenon is flash sukkot. Tzvi says that contractors sometimes arrive in the dead of night with workers, tools, and floodlights, and quickly build a sukkah by morning. Customers are willing to pay more for the night work, with the goal obviously being to evade municipal inspectors who will not have time to notice the building materials in the morning. The neighbors, for their part, mostly turn a blind eye, as many of them behave in the same way.

The contractors simply fix the sukkah in mid-air, and God help whoever is inside, says Tzvi.

The Threat of Fire and Engineering Deficiencies

In the Fire and Rescue services, the dangers are well recognized and attempts are made to warn in advance. Colonel Yossi Deklo, Head of the Operations Division at Fire and Rescue, describes the dangers of collapse and fires during the Sukkot holiday. Deklo warns against the collapse of balconies on which temporary structures are built. He explains that a balcony designed to carry a weight of three tons may collapse when loaded with a sukkah and an entire family raising the weight to five tons or even more, an event that could end in a heavy disaster.

In addition to the danger of collapse, the Sukkot holiday is characterized by numerous fires resulting from pirate construction. In many sukkot, electrical wires are run in a pirate and uninsulated manner, which poses an especially severe danger when exposed to rainwater. Deklo emphasizes the obligation to keep lighting fixtures away from the covering to prevent heating and ignition, and warns against leaving candles, heating appliances, or portable air conditioners unattended.

A burning and relatively new danger that Deklo warns against sharply is the charging of electric bicycles and scooters inside the sukkah. In sukkot, there is a tendency to charge these devices inside the sukkah. The ignition of a lithium battery creates an explosive and rapid fire. Since the covering and envelope materials of the sukkah (wood or tarps) are extremely flammable, the fire will spread at tremendous speed, leaving no time even to use a fire extinguisher. Such a fire on a balcony sukkah, especially in the dead of night while family members are sleeping, could quickly penetrate into the apartment and trap the residents in a way that leaves them no chance to survive.

Rabbinic Warnings and Enforcement

Facing the reality on the ground, the authorities for their part are trying to increase deterrence. The Land Enforcement Administration announced increased preparations and targeted enforcement activity against illegal structures and building additions erected ahead of the holiday. The director general of the authority emphasized in his statement that erecting a sukkah is a holiday commandment, but pirate construction of stable structures and giant sheds without a proper permit constitutes a severe offense and a first-rate safety hazard. The authority clarified that inspectors will conduct daily patrols in ultra-Orthodox concentrations, and immediate administrative demolition orders alongside heavy financial fines reaching tens of thousands of shekels will be issued against lawbreakers.

In the halachic arena as well, voices are growing harsher. The rabbis of the city of Bnei Brak published a sharp proclamation in recent days under the heading And you shall not bring blood upon your house, aggressively denouncing the danger of balconies and unapproved additions. The halachic ruling stated that construction not supervised by a certified engineer borders on the Torah prohibition of endangering lives, and that there is no halachic permission to fulfill a commandment through endangering life. However, despite rabbinic warnings and threats of fines by the authorities, reality on the ground proves that the phenomenon continues to thrive on a large scale, and the demand for pirate sukkot only grows every year.