[Avodah] mitztaer

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 08:32:08AM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
> I just had an operation on my arm yesterday, and my doctor told me not  
> to use it to lift anything heavy for a few days.  In practice this is  
> irrelevant, since my wife and son can carry the necessary equipment into  
> the sukkah.  But suppose I lived alone.  Sitting in the sukkah would not  
> cause me tza'ar, but getting to the sukkah would.  Would that mean I was  
> patur mishum mitztaer? How do you know?

I just found the following in YU's Sukkot to Go 5769. "Happiness
to Go: A Spiritual Plan" by Rabbi Chaim Eisenstein, a RaM at Netiv Aryeh
<http://www.yutorah.org/togo/sukkot/articles/Sukkot_To-Go_-_5769_Rabbi_Chaim_Eisenstein.pdf>
(<http://bit.ly/mW0Xbg>):
    One year, when Rav Soloveitchik was a child, it rained on the first
    night of Sukkos in Chaslovitch. In the middle of the night he felt
    his father nudging him awake. "Berel, Berel, get up. It stopped
    raining. We can go eat in the succah." Already a child prodigy, Rav
    Soloveitchik asked his father, "Father, I don't understand. Isn't
    the reason we assume that we didn't fulfill the mitzvah of eating
    in the succah earlier this evening is that we were mitzta'er when
    we were sitting in the rain? But it is also uncomfortable now to get
    out of bed and go outside." Rav Moshe then explained to his son that
    initially they did not fulfill the mitzvah (according to the Gra)
    because when it rains, the succah loses its identity as a succah.
			    Harerei Kedem vol.1 chap. 115

RMS didn't consider the tza'ar of waking up and getting out of bed to make
one mitzta'eir. I don't know if it's the low level of tza'ar, or because
the issue is a lack of "ke'ein taduru", it refers only to tza'ar directly
caused by the mitzvah itself.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "As long as the candle is still burning,
micha at aishdas.org        it is still possible to accomplish and to
http://www.aishdas.org   mend."
Fax: (270) 514-1507          - Anonymous shoemaker to R' Yisrael Salanter