[Avodah] Birkas haChama

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Micha Berger wrote:
> There is no perfect answer, and thus the question is simply
> how precise need we be. RAM's presentation makes Shmuel's
> tequfah inferior in kind. I'm trying to show that it's
> necessary to approximate -- one differs from the other only
> in degree.

Excellent point. I'm maskim. Thanks.

> I /would/, if the mitzvah is derabbanon, or if someone can
> show me a ra'ayah that these things are or aren't halakhah
> lemosheh misinai like other shiurim.

IOW, if the sechach is 21 amos from the bottom, is the sukkah pasul or kosher on a d'Oraisa level?

Gemara Sukka 2a gives a whole bunch of examples to show that people see what is lower than 20 amos, but not what is higher than 20 amos. And my point was that this is a gross oversimplification, because in a narrow sukkah even 19 amos is hard to see, and in a wide sukkah even 21 amos is visible.

But it seems that those illustrations are merely illustrations, not explanations or derivations. See Rashi there, "Sukkah Mid'Oraisa": "Its twenty amos are derived from the Torah. Before the Mishna had been learned, the shiur was said at Sinai."

So (according to Rashi), a 21 amah tall sukkah is passul d'Oraisa. That pretty much eliminates it as an example for my proposal that Chazal tried to keep the things simple. And if the 20-amah limit for Ner Chanuka was modeled after sukkah, then it too cannot be an example for this (even though Chanuka is clearly d'rabanan). However, if the 20 amah limit of Chanuka was based on visibility *without* referring back to sukkah, then my point might still be valid.

Akiva Miller

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