Jewish Origami Art

by Moishe Unklovitch

Now the Sukkah is decorated. We did it.

As the holidays are coming and Sukkot is around the corner, it's time let out your Jewish artistic soul. You must decorate the Sukkah, and that means Jewish origami. Jewish origami is similar to Japanese origami. Just that we use staples.
A subsection of Jewish art, nothing is more fun than the family sitting around with paper plates, cardboard and colored paper, doing Jewish origami projects with staples and scissors.

The Paper Chain Sukkah Project
Tons of fun. You take a piece of paper, cut it into strips, make each strip a circle and staple it. Stapling is the most important part of the Jewish origami project. Do not skip stapling. Then take the next strip, slip it through the first circle and staple it, thus making another circle. Don't staple before strip is slipped through the circle. This is not linking chains. This isn't Jewish magic. It's Jewish art. The art comes out in how your child staples the strips. Sometimes kids make the strips very thick. If the child successfully staples thick strips, you know they have a future as an artist in Tzfat.

Paper plate Hamentashen
A great way to spend five minutes with the kids. Take a paper plate. Fold the corners, thus making a triangle with a pocket. Similar to the Hamentash pastry, yet you don't fill up the inside with jam. How does it stay together? Staples. Something the Japanese still haven't figured out. At school, they're still ripping the corners of papers to hold them together.
Stuff the Mishloach Manot candies and little bits of cake into the pocket. If you have an extra five minutes to spend with the kids, pull out some markers and let the kids draw on their hands. Any art with markers will end up on the child's hand.
Plastic plate don't work. We've tried this in Israel, and the folded plastic plate just rips.
Please note, the paper plate Hamentashen is not edible. Though it's a Hamentashen, it's not a pastry.

Draw a Dreidel
This is Chanukah origami. As long as it involves paper, it's Jewish origami. We suggest that for fine Jewish origami you use markers.

Jewish Papercut Art
A subsection of Jewish origami, where we also incorporate scissors. For papercuts you use paper, hence Jewish origami. In this form of Jewish origami you cut a design. Any design is Jewish if a Jew cuts it. The same way an animal is Kosher if a Jew Shechts it. You then write something in Hebrew on the remaining paper, again making it Jewish origami.
For many years Jewish papercuts was banned in Eastern Europe due to the injuries. People would take Siddurs, flip the pages and cut themselves. The papercuts burned and many people ended up in hospitals due to Jewish papercuts.
Years later they decided to cut into the paper and make designs. This became a big art form in Haifa, known as Haifa Jewish origami.

Maybe one day the Japanese will figure out how to use staples and save some time.
When purchasing Jewish origami you should know there are scammers out there. To this day, I don’t purchase Jewish papercuts, unless if there's blood on it. Then I know it’s truly a papercut.