[Avodah] Sukkah on Shabbos

[Chana Luntz]

RAM writes:

> One can do tzitzis on two levels. In all cases, there is 
> clearly never a chiyuv to wear a beged which needs tzitzis, 
> but if one chooses to wear such a beged, he is obligated to 
> make sure there is tzitzis on it. If one has a wool or linen 
> beged, and puts tzitzis on it, and he chooses to wear it, he 
> fulfills a d'Oraisa. If the beged is another fiber, such as 
> cotton, I understand that many poskim hold that it's only a 
> d'Rabanan. I will not get into whether this sort of mitzvah 
> is called "chiyuvis" or "kiyumis" or "machsheres" or 
> whatever; my point is that it is the same in all cases, and 
> the only difference is d'Oraisa or d'Rabanan.
> 
> One can also do sukkah on several levels. In all cases, there 
> is clearly never a chiyuv to eat in the sukkah. But if one 
> chooses to eat a keviyus seudah (which we will not define 
> here), then he is obligated to do it in the sukkah, and he 
> will fulfill a d'Oraisa for it. If one chooses to do 
> something other than eating a keviyus seudah (such as 
> drinking a glass of water, or learning, or shmoozing) he is 
> definitely *not* obligated to do it in the sukkah, but he can 
> choose to do it in the sukkah anyway. And if he does so, he 
> will fulfill a d'Oraisa for this too. (Or, at least, I've 
> never heard anyone say this to be merely d'rabanan.)
> 
> So we have an interesting difference between tzitzis and 
> sukkah: The first can be done in two ways; they are both the 
> same in the chiyuv/kiyum area, but one is d'Oraisa and the 
> other is d'Rabanan. The second can also be done two ways, but 
> while one is chiyuv and the other is kiyum, both are d'Oraisa.

Um, I not sure - but are you sure that there is not a second way that is not
a d'rabbanan?  The following is a bit speculative, so I wonder what the olam
thinks about it.

The reason I am saying this is that, all the poskim seem to say very clearly
that the d'orisa obligation is yeshivu k'ain tadiru - you shall dwell in the
sukkah the same way that you dwell in your house.  That would seem to
suggest that if it is a form of yeshivu that is not k'ain tadiru, then it
would not be a d'orisa - but then, what is it, nothing?  Do not people do
this all the time?  Some of the example you bring regarding kiyum might fall
into that category, but another example that pops to mind is the whole
circumstances surrounding our chol hamoed outing .  We took the kids to
Legoland, and my husband's solution to the problem was to have toast for
breakfast (which he never normally does) in the sukkah, and then have potato
salad for lunch.  Some other people who went's solution was to bring a pop
up sukkah - and when we passed it, we saw a man, who clearly had a large
family, sitting in this tiny sukkah with a son on each knee, and about four
or five other sons standing wedged against him while eating their lunch,
while the wife and daughters milled about a few metres away.

Now, in the case of my husband, eating bread for breakfast is a normal thing
to do, it is just that he never does it, so while it is not yeshivu kein
tadiru on a personal level, maybe his daas it batel l'kol adam.  But you
cannot tell me that what this man at Legoland was doing was yeshivu kein
tadiru - NOBODY, but nobody eats his lunch the way he was eating it, and
even less so the way his sons were eating it.  And of course the normal
thing that people on trips to Legoland do is to picnic out in the open air.
However, leaving aside questions about pop up sukkos, the sukkah was clearly
kosher in terms of the halachic definitions.  So, was this man fulfilling
the d'orisa? - I can't quite see how he was.  Was he doing absolutely
nothing?  Doesn't seem correct to say that either as that would mean that
his bracha a bracha l'vatala?  Assuming the sukkah was indeed a kosher one,
nobody seems to be concerned for this.  Best way out I can see is to say
that in fact there is an intermediate category of rabbinic (or perhaps
minhag, but then you get into the bracha and hallel on Rosh Chodesh problem
- and Sephardim seem to do this too) sukkah dwelling - ie when you eat in a
kosher sukkah in a manner that is not yeshivu kein tadiru.

Now if we held that there was a ptur for holchei drachim that fitted the
case of going on a trip for pleasure, then presumably the simple answer to
what to do when one went to Legoland would be simply to picnic.  But Rav
Moshe, inter alia, is dead against this, and says that that ptur is only for
a tzorech like business.  On the other hand, the way one lives in one's
house is not usually to be prevented from taking trips with one's family
either.  The best way I can understand this is that we have a rabbinic form
of mitzvas aseh, that requires one to avail oneself of a sukkah even though
this is emphatically not yeshivu kein tadiru.

Any thoughts?

 
> Akiva Miller

Shabbat Shalom

Chana