[Avodah] Sukkah on Shabbos

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

My son asked this. I think I've heard it before, but I can't remember (or imagine) what the answer might be.

Why was there no gezera against sukkah on Shabbos?

Consider the following, from the perspective of the society current when the gezera against Lulav on Shabbos was enacted: A certain percentage of Jews live in a location such that a Reshus Harabim lies between their home and the location of the chacham to whom they'd go for learning about Lulav. Most of them already know what to do with a lulav, and/or would not violate Shabbos by taking their lulav across the Reshus Harabim to ask the chacham. But a small number of them would do exactly that, and so to protect Shabbos, the mitzvah of Lulav was cancelled for that Shabbos.

(Maybe not all poskim agree that the above is the reason for forbidding lulav on Shabbos. If so, then the question applies only to those poskim who DO subscribe to the above reasoning.)

So we've established that we're dealing with a society in which a real Reshus Harabim exists, and there are people who - for the sake of the mitzvah of lulav - would succumb to the temptation to carry the lulav across that Reshus Harabim, to the chacham.

What I *don't* know is what the "urban planning" was like. Did everyone have a courtyard for their sukkah, so that there was NEVER a Reshus Harabim nearby? Or is maybe there were some people who were *not* able to build their sukkahs nearby? Such a situation is common nowadays in certain areas, where the apartment buildings are packed so closely that there is no option other than to eat in the shul's sukkah. Such people must either make sure to have an eruv in town, or to have the food already at shul before Shabbos begins. But we can get away with that only because there is no gezera preventing it, for fear that people might carry food acroos the Reshus Harabim to the shul. Was this unheard of in Chazal's day?

It is worth noting that most people know what to do with their lulav, and don't need to bring it to the chacham. At the very least, they would have gone to the chacham a few days earlier. This gezera is only for the rare individual who doesn't know what to do, and waits for the last minute to find out. In very sharp contrast, *everyone* needs to bring food to the sukkah *on* Shabbos.

Akiva Miller

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