For Rabbi Yael Buechler, Amazon’s “Happy Tuchus” Sukkot boxes were the Jewish joy we needed this year. (Courtesy Buechler)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Clarification about the Succot boxes\u2019 origin story, or their prospects for improvement, would not come from Howaf, the Amazon seller from which I bought mine. The storefront, one of an increasing number with nonsensical names slinging a wide range of unrelated products, shares no contact information. The Sukkot boxes are no longer available from Howaf, which sells paper goods and decor for dozens of occasions, but many identical products are available from vendors with names such as JZXUAO, Orxiery and ABTOLS. None of them indicated a way to be contacted, either.<\/p>\n
The purveyors are all part of the flood of \u201cpseudo-brands\u201d that all contributed to Amazon\u2019s $30 billion in profits last year. According to a 2020 New York Times investigation, copycat sellers are usually single Chinese manufacturers who use multiple invented names to exploit Amazon\u2019s sales algorithms while complying with U.S. trademark laws. Rather than offer a brand promise of their own, they exist only to wrest value out of the customers that Amazon has captured. As one company representative told the Times, \u201cWe sell the products that are popular on Amazon.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proliferation of Potemkin vendors on Amazon\u2019s marketplace embodies what the cultural commentator Cory Doctorow has described as \u201censhittification.\u201d (Doctorow, who is Jewish, said he was not qualified to comment on the Succot boxes when I reached out through his seemingly named-to-shame website, Craphound.) According to Doctorow, all platforms go through a cycle in which they first deliver value to users and then to creators before turning to the inevitable goal of all corporations, delivering value to shareholders. The result, he writes: \u201cThe platform becomes a useless pile of shit.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Buechler, the cycle has consequences beyond producing gag gifts. She sells Jewish holiday pajamas and other products through her company Midrash Manicures \u2014 and is skeptical of Amazon. \u201cAmazon is not a place where small businesses can thrive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For most of us, though, the result is easily available, if low-quality and environmentally costly, products to meet every need \u2014 including ones we didn\u2019t know we had. And when we buy them, we make our own incremental contributions to a marketplace that is unlikely to give us culturally competent stuff in the future.<\/p>\n
Most of us know this, on some level. But sometimes we simply cannot resist.<\/p>\n
Shoshana Gottlieb, a Jewish educator in Australia who has gained a wide audience on her account Jewish Memes Only, was so enamored of the Sukkot boxes that she asked a friend in the United States to mail them to her. They arrived just before the holiday.<\/p>\n
\u201cEasy answer is because they\u2019re really funny,\u201d Gottlieb said via Instagram DM as to why she had gone the extra 10,000 miles to procure her own boxes.<\/p>\n
She had a more substantive answer, too. \u201cI also think it\u2019s always a bit refreshing to have something go Jewish-viral that isn\u2019t heartbreakingly sad or upsetting and is instead a very unfortunate design error,\u201d Gottlieb wrote.<\/p>\n
The receipts, as they say. (Screenshot from Amazon)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Indeed, Buechler said she thought the tuchus boxes had arrived at precisely the right time, as Jews around the world prepared to mark the first anniversary of Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7 attack on Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been so much going on that we were saying that we want shana yoter tova, a year that\u2019s better. And I think we just needed this extra boost of humor leading up to what will be a very tough Sukkot, as we think about last year\u2019s Sukkot and its aftermath,\u201d she said. \u201cI think we really needed a \u2018happy tuchus\u2019 right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buechler is decorating her sukkah with the boxes, hanging them fully assembled from its ceiling, and plans to repurpose them for Purim packages next year.<\/p>\n
As for me \u2014 I\u2019ve been too busy asking other people to explain my impulse buy even to unwrap my boxes, and I don\u2019t know what, if anything, I\u2019ll use them for. But when my 9-year-old son spied them, he read the misspelled Hebrew far more naturally than I could. Forget tuchus \u2013 hello, nachas!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s too late to place Succot orders for use this year. But don\u2019t worry: TecUnite\u2019s Amazon storefront has already started selling Hanukkah-themed cardboard boxes \u2014 with Christmas-colored red-and-green cookies visible through the cellophane window.<\/p>\n
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