[Avodah] Mitsvat Sukkah is almost unique

[Michael Kopinsky]

On 10/15/07, T613K at aol.com <T613K at aol.com> wrote:

>  To me the difference is so intuitively obvious that I am having trouble
> even putting it into words.
>

I've told many English teachers this line before, but they've never accepted
it as an excuse for a late essay.  This is my first time I got to see an
English teacher say this!



>  a whole nother kind of mitzva
>

Did you really say that?

Now to our regularly scheduled Avodah topic:

RnTK wrote originally:


> 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 bemarried.  Or if you're a
> man living at the time of the Bais Hamikdash, it would be a mitzva to go
> the mikva /if/ you had become tamei.   But you had no chiyuv to become
> tamei!  So there is no "mitzva" to go the mikva in the sense of "universal
> obligation."
>
RnTK wrote now:

>  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.
>

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.

KT,
Michael
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