[Avodah] Mitsvat Sukkah is almost unique

[Elliott Shevin]

Rn. Toby Katz writes: > 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.>  It seems to me you've named an issur, not a chiyuv: AVOID becoming patur. There are cases where we take positive steps to make sure we're chayav (arba kanfos comes to mind), but I don't think you're speaking of that. I question the idea that niddah is a case of something going wrong. Adaraba: if you're not menstruating, you're not ovulating; becoming niddah indicates that your body is functioning properly. (My daughter was having trouble with the frequency of her periods, and mentioned that if it weren't corrected, it could lead to cancer!) The physiology being thus, I don't see a reason to think of niddah as the result of Chava's sin. The pasuk only mentions pain of childbirth. You could add cramps to that, I suppose, but menses are normal and probably would have been, chet or no. As an aside, tumah is not intrinsically a bad thing. It's a barrier to, say, entering the Beis Hamikdash, in order to emphasize the kedusha of that place; and in the case of niddah, marital relations. But you become tamei 
through tending to the dead, giving birth, and other aspects of normal living we 
consider to be desirable within Torah. > 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. No, I'm not. I didn't offer any examples of situational mitzvos, and didn't intend to imply that sukkah is one. Please forgive the confusion. I think Michael Kopinsky's reply better expresses what I was trying to say 
when I suggest that mikvah is every bit as much a mitzvah as sukkah, 
and therefore every bit as much a mitzvah performed with the entire 
body: > I agree with your distinction between mitzvos for which the chiyuv is only> generated by the circumstances (like tevillas nidah) and mitzvos where the> chiyuv exists l'chatchila, even if the circumstances sometimes create a> p'tur. However, I don't know to what extent that is relevant. Birchas> hamazon is a mitzvah that is only generated by the circumstances, but it is> certainly a full mitzvah, and is counted in the various minyanei hamitzvos. Elly
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