[Avodah] Mitsvat Sukkah is almost unique

[T613K at aol.com]

From: Elliott Shevin _eshevin at hotmail.com_ (mailto:eshevin at hotmail.com) 


Rn. Toby Katz writes: > Of course tevillah is a mitzva in the sense  that 
once you became nidah, if > you are a married woman and if you want to  be with 
your husband, you have to > go to the mikva. But you had no chiyuv to  become 
nidah or to be married....>  
 
RES: >>And sukkah is a mitvah if you're not too infirm to perform  it--but 
you didn't have a chiyv to be healthy (only to *strive* to be healthy).  
Providing a get is a mitzvah--but you didn't have a chiyuv to get into an  unhappy 
marriage.><
 
TK:  Whoever first said, "There are two mitzvos that are performed  with the 
> entire body" had in mind this definition of mitzva: an obligation  incumbent 
upon > everyone. (Or, incumbent upon every Jewish man, to be more  precise.)
 
RES: >>It doesn't make sense to me to rule out any mitzvah simply  because 
it's situational; an awful lot of them are. Is there a source for your  
assertion? <<


 
>>>>>
To me the difference is so intuitively obvious that I am having trouble  even 
putting it into words.  There is one kind of mitzva that you are  lechatchila 
obligated to do -- like sukka, matza, shofar and a whole bunch  more -- but 
if something goes wrong, then you are patur (if you get sick, for  example).  
Then there is a whole nother kind of mitzva that only kicks in  in the first 
place if something goes wrong, if something needs to be  corrected -- e.g., 
going to the mikva if you became nidah (which status -- nidus  -- would not even 
exist but for Chava's sin).  
 
In the first set of mitzvos, you seem to be saying something like, "There  is 
no chiyuv to make sure you are not exempt from these mitzvos."  But  
actually, there /is/ such a chiyuv.  That is, you are not allowed to do  something 
deliberately that will cause you to be exempt from these  mitzvos.  Like, you 
can't make yourself sick on purpose so that you won't  have to eat in the sukka.
 
"If you become nidah you have to go to the mikva."
 
"If you are healthy you have to eat in the sukka."
 
As I said, it seems to me intuitively obvious that these are two entirely  
different categories, but I need somebody with a sharper mind than mine to spell 
 out the difference.
 
You can't seriously be claiming that being in good  health is just a 
"situational" grounds for keeping the mitzva of  Sukkos the way "getting divorced" is 
a situational grounds for giving a get or  becoming nidah is a situational 
grounds for going to the mikva.
 


--Toby  Katz
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