Israeli building sukkah falls from 4th floor, is saved by sukkah on ground floor

A Jerusalem man building a sukkah fell off of his fourth floor balcony on Sunday, but he landed on the sukkah belonging to his ground floor neighbor, breaking his fall and probably saving his life.

Neighbors said 24-year-old man fell while assembling his own sukkah on his balcony on the fourth floor. A glass panel he was leaning on broke, and the railing gave way.

Plummeting downward, he smashed into his neighbor’s sukkah on the ground floor.

He was taken to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital with moderate injuries to his lower body. Magen David Adom paramedic Netanel Lifshitz told Hadashot news that the sukkah on the ground floor broke his fall, and that the man was in stable condition.

The roof of the the ritual booths are usually made of palm fronds.

“He was building his sukkah, and leaning on the glass, and because of the pressure, it shattered and he fell off,” a neighbor told the Ynet news site. The woman said it was not the first time the glass on the balconies in the building had broken unexpectedly.

The building of temporary booths on balconies and in gardens during the festival of Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles) recalls the biblical account of the temporary structures erected in the desert by the Israelites during their exodus from Egypt.

The weeklong festival begins Sunday evening.