NJ Jewish News on-line | Biologist endorses sukka-builders' wetlands harvest

Marine biologist Michael Weinstein examines a field of phragmites in the Jersey Meadowlands. Photos courtesy New Jersey Marine Science Consortium

Two years ago, just before the festival of Sukkot, marine biologist Michael Weinstein got a call from a colleague at the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.

"He says, ‘Mike, these religious Jews are out there hacking down the phragmites,'" recalled Weinstein. "I knew instantly what was going on."

As a professor of coastal ecology at Rutgers University's Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Marine Sciences Consortium, Weinstein has been a long-term student of a pesky piece of the wetlands ecosystem know in Latin as Phragmites australis.

The "phrag," as he calls it, "is like kudzu. It's like crabgrass. It doesn't go away, and it has literally taken over the wetlands of the United States in brackish waters and has all kinds of negative ecological ramifications."

But it is not harmful to human beings, and, as Weinstein came to learn, its growth provides the roots of a mitzva for the Jewish community.

Armed with a set of photographs taken that day on a privately owned part of the wetlands, Weinstein tracked the harvesters to their home in a hasidic community in New Hempstead, Rockland County, NY.

After a moment of mutual distrust, they invited Weinstein into a sukka. According to custom, they had thatched the roof of the temporary booth with organic material quite familiar to Weinstein.

"The whole ceiling was covered with phrag," he said. "They go down every year to take it for their Sukkot, and they can cut enough for their whole community in half a day. It's good for the Jews, but it's probably not very important for the ecology. The phrag grows right back with a vengeance. It's like mowing your lawn. It's no different."

Take a trip up the New Jersey Turnpike through the Hackensack Meadowlands and you'll see phrag everywhere. The tall reedy growths arrived in the area in the late 1800s, when they were used plentifully as packing material aboard ships before being discarded into bays and estuaries near the harbors in Boston, New York, and Baltimore.

"Essentially, the phrag interferes with the feeding patterns of 95 percent of commercially harvested finfish and shellfish, which are dependent on wetlands as a food source," said Weinstein.

After being born at sea, the young fish find their way into bays and salt marshes, where they spend the first year of their lives in what is supposed to be a protected system.

"The salt marshes produce copious nutrients for the fish that live there. And because the waters are shallow and warm, those environments allow the fish to grow in what is essentially an incubator, with few predators around to devour them," Weinstein explained.

Then along came the phragmites, affecting the water quality and destroying the nutrients that the fledgling fish need for their first year of life.

"The phrag are very, very fertile. They will sprout. You break up a phrag plant into a thousand pieces and throw it onto the ground and it grows into a thousand new plants. It spreads almost like a disease. It reduces the biodiversity of the wetlands dramatically," said the professor.

The Jewish men who travel south from Rockland County to the marshes may not make much impact on the ecosystem when they remove the destructive reeds, Weinstein said. But they are putting the tall grasses to a good use.

"The roofs of the sukkot are supposed to be constructed from vegetation," he said. Used as the raw material for thatched roofs in many parts of the world, phrag has shown itself worthy as a water-repellant cover.

But, Weinstein said, he can already hear "some inevitable questions" from cautious suburban homeowners: "Are you taking insects along with the phragmites? Will phragmites start to sprout in my lawn?"

The answers are simple, he said. "The risks are minimal because there is not enough salt on your lawn to trigger maturation of the seeds."

Although he is "not religious," Weinstein said, he is eager to help his fellow Jews harvest the plant.

"I'd love to do it with kids if they get in touch with me. I'd find a place where we could get permission to take the phragmites, and once we got back, they could help make sukkas at as many temples as we can. If we want to do four or five temples, it will take about half a day. But I'd guess you can cut enough phrag for a family's personal sukka in 15 or 20 minutes."

People wishing to join in harvesting phrag can contact Weinstein or 732-872-1300, ext 21.