Despite a first attempt, mistaken by a non-Jewish neighbor for a giant doghouse, Naomi Fishman continues to assemble a sukkah in her yard.

In so doing, she joins countless other Jews area-wide, who relish giving shape annually to the temporary shelters used by the children of Israel as they wandered 40 years in the desert.

For Joanne Cohn, a sukkah also links to a more-present memory. Her father, Gary Cohn, spent part of his childhood in the Shanghai Ghetto in China, where some 20,000 Jews fled Nazi persecution during World War II.

He had his bar mitzvah in the ghetto. He also had a sukkah there. The celebration of Sukkot this year continues through Oct. 19.

One of Joanne Cohn’s earliest memories is “going outside and holding the wood so my dad could bang his hammer” to build the sukkah.

She introduced the tradition to her husband, Jeff Levine, and their son, Aaron Levine. “The sukkah reminds me I’m Jewish and connects me to the harvest and to Israel,” she says. “It’s spiritual and so much a part of what my life has always been.”

Because her father worked for a succession of Jewish organizations, she lived in more than a dozen states while growing up. Now, married to a pilot and residing with her family in Creve Coeur, she understands wandering. Cohn attends services at Bais Abraham Congregation.

The frame of the present Cohn/Levine sukkah is made of plywood, purchased three years ago and now warped enough to resemble the Golden Arches, Cohn admits.

A number of her family’s decorations, including now-laminated paper chains and fruit cutouts, date to the Temple Israel preschool days of son Aaron, nearly 14.

Some of what gets served inside the family sukkah is likewise memory-laden. Using German family recipes that survived the Holocaust and in some cases, dating back seven generations, Cohn and her son bake plum cake and braided challah for Sukkot.

Other St. Louisans home-grow and personalize their own Sukkot traditions. Though kits for “unique” wood frame and tubular sukkot are available as well as some with a “klutz-proof assembly manual,” many families continue to make their own.

Until she married Harvey Greenstein, Esther Lyss-Greenstein never had a family sukkah. Now, theirs in Clayton is in “about its fifth reincarnation,” she says. From a wire frame, it has evolved to easy-to-manage poles, attachable to Greensteins’ deck.

Next, the couple drape three sides of the sukkah with blue plastic and add tree branches to the top, spaced widely enough, according to tradition, to see the sky, stars and moon.

The family tries to eat nightly in the sukkah. Like many St. Louisans, the Greensteins, who attend services at both congregations Shaare Emeth and B’nai Amoona, entertain friends in their sukkah.

As a new tradition, they ask guests to bring canned goods and other donations for the Harvey Kornblum Jewish Food Pantry here.

Two ex-Bronx, N.Y. residents have also fine-tuned their Sukkot holiday. Dr. Norman Fishman and his wife, Naomi, of Creve Coeur, moved here in the mid-1970s. “I had good Jewish experiences in growing up, but I wanted more,” Naomi Fishman says.

Part of that more included building a Fishman sukkah using plywood cut for a sukkah, and left to them by friends who relocated from here.

Upon completion, a previous conversation with a non-Jewish neighbor who had four Golden Retriever dogs, led that neighbor to appreciatively comment: “The doghouse doesn’t have to be that big.”

The Fishmans’ sukkah has changed considerably. Now accessible from a walkway leading from the deck, the present sukkah has a telephone-pole frame that looks like a tree house. Each fall, the pre-attached hooks that otherwise hold hanging baskets are used instead to support a tarp. For the sukkah’s airy roof, son-in-law Chad Wallis contributes evergreen branches from his family’s farm in outstate Missouri.

Strands of lights, ropes, gourds and plastic fruit help complete the décor, shared annually with some 70 guests. The sukkah, “the star of the show,” Fishman says, seats 20. Other guests mill about the house and outdoors.

To supplement her menu of homemade chicken/matzo ball and vegetable soups, plus sliced brisket and turkey for sandwiches, guests bring side dishes.

The deeper meanings of Sukkot have long intrigued Fishman. According to the Zohar, or commentary on the mystical aspects of Judaism, sukkah guests are to include Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David. Since these additional guests cannot be seen or heard, Fishman wondered: “Why invite them? Perhaps to suggest a certain kind of conversation.”

Several years ago at Traditional Congregation, fellow members followed her suggestion to collectively build Sukkot on the synagogue’s grounds. Inside the 10 structures that resulted, they took her cue and talked about wandering.

This year, Fishman has been a driving force behind “Sukkah City STL,” a competition in which the 10 winning sukkot – contemporary in design, following traditional Jewish guidelines and exploring the role that boundaries play in life – will be on display Oct. 18 to 22, around the Women’s Building on the Danforth Campus at Washington University (see News and Schmooze on Page 2 for more details).

The project is a joint undertaking of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Wash U, St. Louis Hillel and the Museum of ImaJewnation (a Fishman brainchild, based at Traditional Congregation), with support from the Jewish Community Center.

Fishman’s hope is that the display leads to “a very big conversation about the future, how the boundaries that structure our lives are changing and how we feel about that.”