daf bit: Sukkah

[cellio]

Today's daf bit is a seasonal diversion into tractate Sukkah. During the week-long festival we are commanded to "dwell" in sukkot (booths), which the rabbis understand to mean eating and sleeping. But we learn in a mishna (Sukkah 25a) that casual eating is permitted outside the sukkah. What is casual eating? In the g'mara (26a) R' Yosef says the volume of two or three eggs, but Abaye says this sometimes suffices for a whole meal! Rather, Abaye says, it's only as much as a student eats before proceeding to the college assembly (a small breakfast, it sounds like). The g'mara continues: casual eating is permitted outside the sukkah, but not casual sleeping (a nap). Why not? Because you might sleep soundly and it turns out to be a real sleep, which you were required to do in the sukkah. Rami b. Ezekiel says a casual sleep means the time it takes to walk one hundred cubits.

Today's daf is Menachot 48.

Comments

[goljerp]

Yeah, I was just doing a humble brag, I guess. :-)

One of the JTS [1] faculty who goes to my shul once did a class whose title I don't recall exactly at the moment, but it was basically, "The Shulchan Aruch says you can do THAT in your kitchen?"

As much as some people like to think that Jewish practice now is exactly as G-d handed down on Mt. Sinai, or perhaps as codified in the Talmud, or at least in the midevil halachic compilations like the Shulchan Aruch, the truth is that it has evolved quite a bit from there. Especially in the kitchen.

So, yeah, I'm happily eating whole meals outside the sukkah -- although I've not been eating bread outside during that meal unless I started (kiddush and/or motzei ) inside. And happily sleeping (or at least attempting to) outside the sukkah, even on nights when there isn't rain in the forcast for the evening. Although other than the first night, I think there's been rain every night so far.

[1] The Jewish Theological Seminary, a Seminary for the Conservative movement, located about a mile from our shul.