Autumn Harvest Season

[Farmhouse and factory in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn], ca. 1885, V1974.28.70; Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Long Island lantern slide collection, ARC 195; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Fall happens to be my favorite season of the year.  I especially enjoy it in Brooklyn and the Northeast because of the Autumnal colors after a sun-bleached summer and before a dishwater grey winter.  As you roam around Brooklyn this week, you might also notice the many sukkahs on the balconies of Jewish families in neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Midwood, and Crown Heights.

Sukkot begins five days after Yom Kippur and lasts for seven days (October 8 to October 15).  It has dual significance: first to commemorate the 40 year period when Jews wandered the desert; and second as a celebration of the harvest season.  In the Northeast United States, it sometimes coincides with Halloween and Thanksgiving, too.  A sukkah is a temporary dwelling and in observance of the festival, Jews build or install a sukkah that has 2 ½ walls and decorated with the corn and squash that is in season at this time.  A sukkah does not have to have solid walls and should actually be sparsely decorated so that rain can get through but the inhabitants may also see the stars at night.

While I’m neither religious nor outdoorsy, it is fun to imagine myself collecting corn in the field pictured above and other regional vegetables from the farm next door to decorate my own sukkah.  In any case, Sukkot is a joyous occasion, much like the colors in the lantern slide above.

A lantern slide is a positive and transparent photograph on glass popular in the 19^th century.  It was used like a slide show or Powerpoint presentation in a traveling presentation, sometimes referred to as a “magic lantern” show.  In the case of this slide, it was beautifully handcolored.

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