Sukkah 006

נושא: Sukkah

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

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If someone erects his sukkah under a tree it is as if he had erected it inside his house. [If one] sukkah [has been erected] above another sukkah the upper one is valid and the lower one is invalid. Rabbi Yehudah says [that] if the upper one is not suitable for occupation the lower one is valid.

1:
We have seen that the word 'sukkah' derives from the Hebrew word for the thatch that it its roofing, s^ekhakh. Indeed, a sukkah without s^ekhakh is not a sukkah for the purposes of the festival. Furthermore, s^ekhakh that is in itself invalid is tantamount to no s^ekhakh at all, and therefore such a sukkah would be invalid. Later mishnahs in this tractate will spell out some of the criteria that validate — or invalidate — s^ekhakh.

2:
Our mishnah does, in fact, use rather strange language to rule that a sukkah erected under a tree is invalid. In the Gemara [Sukkah 9b] one sage noticed this:

Rava says, [Our Mishnah] refers only to a tree whose shade is greater than the sunlight [shining through the thatch]; but if the sunlight is greater than its shade, it would be valid. Whence [do we know this]? — Because [our mishnah] is worded, "it is as if he had erected it inside his house". Now why does it say "it is as if he had erected it inside his house"? Why does it not simply say 'it is invalid'? So, what it is saying is that a tree is like a house: just as in a house the shade is more than the sunlight, so a tree gives more shade than sunlight.

3:
So, according to Rava only if the shade in the sukkah afforded by a tree is greater than the amount of sunlight that it lets in would the sukkah be invalid. The rest of the sages disagree. They refer to something that we shall learn in the next mishnah. At this point, let us just explain briefly: the s^ekhakh must be detached from the ground in which it grows. So, regardless of the amount of sunlight that reaches the sukkah through the leaves of the tree, the s^ekhakh (and therefore the sukkah) is invalid because the thatching material is still attached to the soil.

4:
Therefore, we must understand the first clause of our mishnah as saying something like this: If someone erects his sukkah under a tree it is just as invalid as if he had erected it inside his house.

5:
The second clause of our mishnah presents a maḥloket between Tanna Kamma and Rabbi Yehudah. Tanna Kamma rules that if one sukkah is erected on top of another the upper sukkah is valid the lower one is not. Rabbi Yehudah agrees with this as a general ruling but holds that there could be a situation in which the lower sukkah would nevertheless be valid.

6:
If people had erected one sukkah on top of another anyone sitting in the lower sukkah would not be sitting under s^ekhakh which is open to the sky, and this defeats the purpose of the sukkah. (Remember that the main purpose of the sukkah is to teach us that we are subject to the vagaries of nature and climate and that God is man's only true security.) The sages derive their ruling not only from common sense but also from a quirk in the written Torah. By a great stretch of interpretative imagination it would be possible to understand the Torah as permitting one to erect one sukkah under another; for the Torah [Leviticus 23:42] says

You shall reside in huts for seven days

And the word 'huts' is plural! In order to counteract such a far-fetched interpretation the sages point out that in the Hebrew text the word 'huts' is written defectively. Were it not for the vowel points we could have read the word as if it were singular!

7:
Rabbi Yehudah bar-Ilai maintains that under certain circumstances the lower sukkah would be valid. If the upper sukkah is not suitable for residence the lower sukkah would be valid. In his commentary on our mishnah Rambam explains:

When it says 'not suitable for occupation' it means that if the lower sukkah is so fragile that it can in no way support the cushions and blankets that are spread over it [in the upper sukkah] there is no disagreement [between Tanna Kamma and Rabbi Yehudah] that the bottom sukkah is valid, because we can rely on the [s^ekhakh of the] upper one. And if it were strong enough to support the cushions and blankets that are spread over it there is no disagreement that the lower one is invalid. But if it can with difficulty support the cushions and blankets but the roof wobbles because of them — in this Rabbi Yehudah disagrees with the [rest of the] sages. All this assumes that the space between the two roofs is at least ten handbreadths; if it is less than ten handbreadths the lower sukkah will be valid. Halakhah does not follow the opinion of Rabbi Yehudah.

8:
I ask myself why anybody would want to erect one sukkah on top of another. Rambam's explanation exposes the problems of such an arrangement: the s^ekhakh of the lower sukkah would also be the floor of the upper sukkah, upon which those residing in it would lay down cushions and blankets for when they relax there or sleep there. This would mean that to all intents and purposes the lower sukkah has no s^ekhakh at all. It would, in fact, be the same as the situation in the first clause: it might just as well have been erected inside the house!

9:
I suppose that considerations of available space might suggest to neighbours to erect one sukkah on top of another, but surely space could be found somewhere for the second sukkah. In Avot 028 I wrote:

Chatzer People lived in houses of two stories, mainly. One family lived in the ground floor apartment (bayit) and another family lived in the first-floor apartment (aliyyah). These houses were arranged in a kind of U-shape and the open space left in the middle was a communal area which also gave its name to the whole housing complex: "courtyard". Thus a 'courtyard' was the name of a housing complex in which at least six families resided — maybe more.

Perhaps neighbours would want their sukkah to replicate their usual living arrangements: family A lives in the bayit and family B lives in the aliyyah. So family A should reside in the lower sukkah and family B in the upper one. In any case, this speculation is pointless because halakhah follows Tanna Kamma and the lower sukkah would be invalid anyway.

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