Sukkah 016

נושא: Sukkah

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

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If someone supports his sukkah on the feet of the bed it is valid. Rabbi Yehudah says, "If it can't stand on its own it is invalid." An over-thatched sukkah whose shade is greater than its sunlight is valid. If it is as thick as a house, even though the stars cannot be seen from it it is valid.

1:
The first clause of our mishnah presents a difference of opinion between Tanna Kamma and Rabbi Yehudah bar-Ilai. We have already noted that sometimes space in a sukkah could be at a premium, therefore it seems that some people would push their bed right up against a panel and use the edge of the bed as a support for the panel itself. In other words, the panel does not reach the ground but rests on the edge of the bed.

2:
Rabbi Yehudah holds the view that a sukkah must be a permanent home, as it were. Throughout the festival it must be and remain a sturdy structure because, as we noted in the previous shiur, during these seven days the sukkah is a person's permanent place of abode. The rest of the sages (personified by Tanna Kamma) disagree: the lesson of the festival, the frailty of the human condition and trust in God, is best learned from a more flimsy structure.

3:
Rabbi Yehudah concedes to Tanna Kamma that if the sukkah remains sturdy, even though one of the panels rests on the feet of the bed, then such a sukkah is valid; however, if such a sukkah is rendered more flimsy by this arrangement he invalidates the sukkah. Halakhah, of course, follows Tanna Kamma.

4:
The second clause of our mishnah is concerned with the s^ekhakh. It is not clear what "over-thatched" means. Here is the explanation given by Rabbi Ovadya of Bertinoro:

He did not lay the boughs [neatly] one next to the other, but had one bough going up and another going down; the result being that the amount of sunlight is greater than the amount of shade Our mishnah tells us that we must judge [the s^ekhakh] as if the boughts were laid properly. If then the amount of shade would exceed the amount of sunlight the sukkah is valid.

Rabbi Ovadya seems to understand the term 'over-thatched' as meaning higgledy-piggeldy and carelessly. The litmus test would be whether there would be more shade than sunlight if those same boughs had been laid neatly.

5:
However, in his magnum opus on halakhah, the Tur, Rabbi Ya'akov ben-Asher, the son of the Rosh (Rabbi Asher ben-Yechi'el), sees this differently.

When one bough goes up and another goes down, if one is not three handbreadths higher than the other (or even if one is three handbreadths higher than another but each one that goes up is one handbreadth wide) it is valid. Rashi says [that this is so] even when there is more sunlight than shade, because when one [bough] is higher than another the sunlight comes in from the sides; even so it is valid. But Rabbi Yeshaya [di Trani] writes that if there is more sunlight than shade it is most certainly invalid… And, indeed, it is not possible to validate a sukkah whose sunlight is greater than its shade… [Tur Oraˍ Ḥayyim 631],/p>

It seems to me that what the Tur is saying here is that 'over-thatched' refers to a situation where some of the boughs are laid one way and others are laid the other way in a kind of weaving pattern.

6:
In his Shulḥan Arukh [Oraḥ Ḥayyim 631:5] Rabbi Yosef Karo rules:

If it was over-thatched (which means hap-hazard), some of the s^ekhakh going up and some down, it is valid provided that the space between a [bough] going up and one going down is not greater than three handbreadths [about 24 centimetres]…

Rabbi Moshe Isserles notes here:

This means that if the space between the lower one [and the higher one] is one handbreadth [8 centimetres] one should pull the upper one down and then it is valid, even if there is more sunlight [than shade]. The shade will be greatest when the sun is at its zenith.

7:
Our mishnah concludes by reminding us that the litmus test of being able to see the stars through the s^ekhakh is worthy but not essential: even if the s^ekhakh is so thick that one cannot see the stars at night from inside the sukkah it is nevertheless a valid sukkah.

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